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A worker wearing a face mask cleans the floor near a Baidu AI robot at the company's headquarters in Beijing, China. File photo: REUTERS/TINGSHU WANG
A worker wearing a face mask cleans the floor near a Baidu AI robot at the company's headquarters in Beijing, China. File photo: REUTERS/TINGSHU WANG

Beijing — Baidu’s chatbot, dubbed Ernie Bot, has garnered more than 100-million users, according to Wang Haifeng, the Chinese internet company’s chief technology officer.

The milestone comes after Baidu opened its equivalent of ChatGPT to the public in August. That was preceded by a partial unveiling and more than five-month trial where select users could test the chatbot’s capabilities.

Analysts said though the partial unveiling in March was underwhelming, it still gave the company a valuable first-mover advantage in a market that has since become crowded with dozens of players, as Chinese tech companies, large and small, look to develop chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

ChatGPT was launched in late 2022 and became the fastest-growing software application in the world within six months.

According to a ranking published on Thursday by SuperCLUE, which ranks generative AI-powered chatbots, Ernie Bot leads all Chinese versions, though  its score of 79.02 is more than 10 points lower than the latest version of ChatGPT.

Reuters

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