Men interact with Baidu's AI robot near the company logo at its headquarters in Beijing, China April 23, 2021.
Florence Lo | Reuters
SHENZHEN — Baidu The company's ChatGPT-like Ernie bot has exceeded 200 million users, CEO Robin Li said Tuesday.
He added the company will hold another round of the AI development competition and offer a prize of 50 million yuan ($7 million).
Li, co-founder and chairman of Baidu, gave the opening keynote titled “Everyone is a Developer” at Baidu's AI Create conference. According to the company, approximately 5,000 people attended the event.
Li demonstrated three development tools—AgentBuilder, AppBuilder, and ModelBuilder. According to the company, these tools create and integrate AI-powered chatbots with Baidu web search or allow users to create applications without any coding knowledge.
Baidu released ChatGPT-like chatbot Ernie bot more than a year ago and received the green light from Beijing for this. public use in August.
This chatbot is based on Baidu's large language model Ernie. Smartphone companies Samsung and Honor have integrated Ernie's AI capabilities with several mobile devices.
According to Baidu, as of December, about 26,000 businesses were actively accessing Ernie's capabilities on a monthly basis. The company said Ernie processed more than 50 million queries per day.
“In 2024, we expect AI revenue contribution to become more meaningful, while our core business will remain strong,” Li said on the month-end earnings call 2, according to the FactSet scorecard.
Baidu is expected to announce first-quarter results on May 16.
The global rush to develop AI capabilities, especially exploiting the technology's content creation capabilities, has led to a surge in demand for Nvidia's graphics processors. These chips are critical in providing the computing power needed to run and train large AI language models.
US export controls, announced over the past two years, have limited China's access to such high-end semiconductors.
Li said in February that Baidu's stock of AI chips “allows 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 that China is about two years behind the US in AI development.
Many analysts expect Chinese companies will be able to find an advantage in AI on the application front.
According to Barclays estimates, China's AI market – consisting mainly of hardware, followed by software and services – is expected to exceed $26 billion in size by 2026, up from just under 15 billion USD last year.
Analysts estimate China's spending on “digital transformation” will grow 19.2% from 2023 to 2026, far exceeding the expected worldwide increase of 15.6%.
– CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this report.
