CHINA: Shares of China’s Baidu Inc. skyrocketed after the company revealed on Tuesday that internal testing of a ChatGPT-inspired project would shortly be concluded.
When the company announced that the service would be called “Wenxin Yiyan,” or “ERNIE Bot” in English, the Hong Kong-listed shares reportedly had their best day since March, rising 15%.
Also rising 15% in premarket trade were Baidu’s American depositary receipts. Baidu claimed internal testing should be finished soon to be ready for the rollout next month.
Chinese AI stocks increased quickly because people were betting on the new technology. After all, ChatGPT, a chatbot backed by Microsoft, was a worldwide hit.
ChatGPT, which can write articles, essays, jokes, and even poetry in response to prompts, was named the fastest-growing consumer app in history just two months after its release.
It has led several tech companies to increase their investment in the hotly touted generative AI technology, which until recently was more of a supporting player than a significant contributor to profits.
Microsoft introduced its own AI on Tuesday, and Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, revealed on Monday that it would launch a chatbot service and add more AI to its search engine. This highlights the growing competition to lead a new wave of computing.
On Tuesday, Baidu, China’s version of Google, joined the craze.
It said that “ERNIE,” which stands for “Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration,” is a large AI-powered language model that was created in 2019 and has grown over time to be able to do things like interpret language, make language, and turn text into images.
In a presentation earlier this year, Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang stressed the significance of deep learning as the foundation of artificial intelligence and said it demonstrates “increasingly significant promise.”
Also Read: Microsoft’s ChatGPT Event to Commence Today
