Baidu launched Ernie Bot the AI chatbot which will compete with ChatGPT, yesterday at Baidu’s Beijing Headquarter. The launch event saw CEO Robin Li presenting slides of images and pre-recorded videos of the chatbot instead of a live demo. Even the recorded videos did not show any extraordinary features, which ultimately led to a fall in the company’s share price.
The hour-long launch event gave a very small glimpse of the much-awaited Ernie Bot which was speculated to take on the world’s most famous AI app ChtaGPT. ChatGPT is taking the world by storm with its ability to converse like a human, compose music, write and debug computer programs, write stories, poetries, fairy tales, essays, and speeches, take tests, and more. However, the launch event of Ernie Bot showed very limited features like the bot carrying out mathematical calculations, speaking in Chinese dialects, and generating a video and image with text prompts.
Also where ChatGPT was opened to the general public last November, Ernie Bot is still developing and Baidu has released the beta version to selected users only. The company said that it will open the chatbot for a small group of individual users with invitation codes. Corporate organizations who wish to use the chatbot’s service can embed the bot into their products via Baidu’s cloud platform.
Baidu’s Share Price and Future Value
Last month when Baidu announced its plan to take on ChatGPT with the indigenous Ernie Bot the company shares soar within hours and gained almost 15%. However, the use of pre-recorded videos and lack of public launch disappointed the investors and send the company stocks crashing. Baidu’s Hong Kong shares fell as much as 10% during the event and closed at a 6.4% lower price. The company lost almost $3 billion in market value within an hour.
During the presentation, CEO Li admitted that Ernie Bot was far from perfect and was launched not because it was ready but only because the market demanded it. Post-event, the company said that after the release of ChatGPT, only Baidu has made a benchmark product among the major tech companies in the world. Though the company did not comment on the sharp drop in stock price, it released an official statement saying that the traffic on Baidu’s cloud was soaring as more than 30,000 corporate users had applied to test the API of Ernie Bot’s business-facing edition.
86Research analyst Charlie Chai said that though the event didn’t go well with investors, he still viewed Baidu as the best in China’s AI space. He further added that he would still advise investors to patiently hold on to Baidu shares as the company has great future prospects.
Baidu has great plans for using Artificial Intelligence in almost all segments of its business. The company has spent years in research and Development and invested extensively in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning Technology. The company’s game plan is to use Ernie Bot to revolutionize its search engine and advance its cloud services. It also plans to integrate the AI chatbot with its smart car technology and household appliances thereby creating a whole new eco-system controlled by Artificial Intelligence.
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