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With Ernie Bot, the Chinese Internet company Baidu has probably the strongest Chinese ChatGPT competitor on the market. Now the company announced its first numbers.

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China's leading internet search company Baidu has beaten financial expectations in the last quarter, thanks in part to generative AI. The company's AI chatbot, Ernie Bot, China's answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT, has reached 70 million users in the three months since its launch.

Ernie Bot is integrated into all of Baidu's major products, and Baidu charges a monthly subscription fee of about eight US dollars to use it.

But Ernie Bot is nowhere near the numbers of OpenAI's ChatGPT: After a dip in the summer, ChatGPT's web traffic rebounded to about 1.7 billion visits worldwide in October 2023, close to its peak of 1.8 billion in May 2023.

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In the U.S., traffic increased to 164.3 million visits in September and could exceed 195 million visits in October, which would be a record.

AI model flood in China

Baidu founder Robin Li recently expressed concern about China's "war of a hundred models," in which tech giants and venture capitalists invest billions of dollars in startups that develop new AI models from scratch, often on an open-source basis.

Li believes this is a waste: the goal should be AI applications with millions of users, not a multitude of AI models. According to Li, the AI model on which the Ernie bot is based matches the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4.

Rong Luo, Baidu's chief financial officer, said in the company's quarterly earnings announcement that the company will continue to prioritize investment in generative AI and basic models, while relentlessly focusing on efficiency and strategic resource allocation.

Western technology companies also face the challenge of controlling the cost of generative AI as they scale.

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Summary
  • Baidu's AI chatbot, Ernie Bot, has reached 70 million users in three months, contributing to the company's better-than-expected financial performance. The chatbot is integrated into Baidu's main products and costs users about $8 per month.
  • Despite its success, Ernie Bot's user numbers lag far behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, which had 1.7 billion visits worldwide in October 2023, with U.S. traffic potentially exceeding 195 million visits.
  • Baidu founder Robin Li has expressed concern about China's "war of a hundred models," in which tech giants and investors pour billions into AI startups, often on an open-source basis. Li believes the focus should be on AI applications with millions of users, not numerous AI models.
Online journalist Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER. He believes that artificial intelligence will fundamentally change the relationship between humans and computers.
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