Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, has revealed that its AI chatbot Ernie Bot has amassed a user base of over 200 million in just 13 months since its launch. This milestone was announced by Robin Li Yanhong, the co-founder and CEO of Baidu, at the company’s AI developer conference held in Shenzhen. Baidu, in its bid to capitalize on China’s flourishing AI market, has been at the forefront of developing AI chatbot technologies. Ernie Bot, powered by a large language model (LLM), has seen significant success with more than 85,000 enterprise clients utilizing its services.
During the conference, Li introduced three new tools based on Ernie to aid developers in building applications, AI agents, and models. These tools have been designed to accommodate developers who may not have programming skills, making it easier for them to harness the power of AI. Li emphasized the importance of developing AI apps that cater to market demands, stating that the LLM itself does not directly create value.
In China’s competitive AI market, Baidu has emerged as a major player, with over 200 LLMs vying for attention. Ernie Bot was initially released in March 2023 as China’s response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is not accessible in mainland China. Since then, there has been a surge of interest in AI, with both tech giants and startups developing their own chatbot models. Moonshot AI, for instance, recently launched the chatbot Kimi Chat, powered by its Moonshot LLM, and raised over $1 billion in funding.
While Baidu has been successful in building a substantial user base for Ernie Bot, Li expressed concerns about the proliferation of LLMs without sufficient AI-native applications based on these models. He described it as a “huge waste of resources.” In November 2023, Baidu introduced an updated version of Ernie Bot, which Li claimed was comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-4. The company also launched a paid version, Ernie 4.0, in November to further drive the commercialization of its chatbot services.
During Baidu’s earnings call in February, Li highlighted the monetization breakthroughs achieved by Ernie, with generative AI services and related businesses generating 656 million yuan in revenue during the fourth quarter. This accounted for approximately 7.8% of Baidu’s total cloud service revenue.
Baidu’s success with Ernie Bot underscores the tremendous potential of AI chatbots in revolutionizing industries and catering to market demands. As China’s AI landscape continues to evolve, Baidu remains at the forefront, driving innovation and monetization in the chatbot space. With over 200 million users within a short span, Ernie Bot has proven to be a formidable force, heralding the dawn of AI-powered conversational assistants in the Chinese market.
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