On April 23, 2021, at the headquarters in Beijing, China, men interacted with Baidu artificial intelligence robots near the company’s trademark.
Florence | Reuters
Shenzhen – Baidu CEO Robin Li said on Tuesday that the number of users of the company’s ChatGPT-like Ernie bot has exceeded 200 million.
He added that the company would hold another round of artificial intelligence development competition with a prize of 50 million yuan ($7 million).
Li Shufu, co-founder and chairman of Baidu, delivered an opening speech titled “Everyone is a Developer” at the Baidu AI Create conference. According to the company, approximately 5,000 people attended the event.
Li demonstrated three development tools-AgentBuilder, AppBuilder and ModelBuilder. The tools create artificial intelligence chatbots and integrate them with Baidu web search, or allow users to create apps without any coding knowledge, the company said.
Baidu released Ernie bot, a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, more than a year ago and received a public use license from Beijing in August.
The chatbot is based on Baidu’s large language model Ernie. Smartphone companies Samsung and Honor have integrated Ernie’s AI capabilities into some mobile devices.
According to Baidu, as of December, about 26,000 businesses were actively accessing Ernie’s features each month. The company claims that Ernie handles more than 50 million queries per day.
“By 2024, we expect AI revenue contribution to become more meaningful, while our core business will remain resilient,” Lee said during an earnings call in late February, according to FactSet records.
Baidu is scheduled to release its first-quarter results on May 16.
The global enthusiasm for developing artificial intelligence capabilities, especially the ability to generate content using the technology, has led to a surge in demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units. These chips are critical to providing the computing power needed to run and train large language models for artificial intelligence.
Export controls announced by the United States over the past two years have restricted China’s access to such high-end semiconductors.
Li said in February that Baidu’s AI chip reserves “enable us to continue to enhance Ernie over the next year or two.”
Earlier this month, Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai said in an interview with Norges Bank Investment Management that he estimated China was about two years behind the United States in the development of artificial intelligence.
Many analysts expect that Chinese companies will be able to find advantages in artificial intelligence applications.
According to Barclays estimates, China’s artificial intelligence market (mainly composed of hardware, followed by software and services) will exceed US$26 billion by 2026, up from just under US$15 billion last year.
Analysts estimate that China’s spending on “digital transformation” will grow by 19.2% between 2023 and 2026, exceeding the global expected growth of 15.6%.
—CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
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