China Focuses On Generative AI With ChatGPT Rival ERNIE

The United States leads the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race, but China aims to take the crown with its latest AI Bot, ERNIE. Developed by Baidu, one of China’s biggest tech giant, ERNIE is the country’s first homegrown AI platform officially released to the public.

Baidu first unveiled ERNIE in March 2023, when the tech giant granted a select few people access to its trial version. Baidu has not announced any updates about the interactive chat bot’s global release, which is currently available only in China.

ERNIE: China’s New Hope

In its efforts to lead the global race to create Artificial Intelligence, China has fast-tracked the development of AI. Baidu is among the first to release an AI product to the Chinese public. However, a report suggests that five other Chinese companies also have the green light to launch their AI products.

ERNIE stands for “Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration.” In essence, ERNIE is a chatbot designed to solve queries, perform documentation, and provide analysis, similar to interactive AIs like ChatGPT and Bard. The Chinese AI chatbot also has the ability to generate images and videos from text prompts like Stable Diffusion, Mid-Journey, and Open AI’s Dall-E.

Previously, the Baidu team pitted ERNIE’s v3.5 against the well-known GPT-4 language model. Baidu claims the competition resulted in ERNIE 3.5 scoring better in comprehensive ability, and the Chinese chatbot also outperformed its American counterpart in Chinese capabilities.

Baidu also allows third-party plugin compatibility with ERNIE to make it more customized according to the preference of the user. The tech giant also announced the launch of other AI linked products that will be methodically released to the public. Currently, ERNIE is available through a whitelist program, where users will gradually gain access to the chat bot.

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China’s AI Vision

It’s no secret that China keeps the privacy of its people as the highest priority, due to which global AI platforms like Chat GPT are not available to users based in China. With the launch of the ERNIE bot, China now has a potent Artificial Intelligence platform that can rival Chat GPT.

Apart from Baidu, other tech players like Tencent and SenseTime have also received approval from the Chinese government for their AI endeavors. SenseTime has also launched it’s AI product called SenseChat, a Chat GPT style platform along with a slew of AI products linked to it.

China understood the need for AI regulations and has taken the initiative and launched policies to govern AI linked products. The stringent AI policy ensures that companies must have the necessary permissions before launching the products to the public.

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