China’s Baidu withdraws its public launch of a ChatGPT-like “Ernie bot”

Baidu, China’s leading search engine, announced on Monday morning that instead of the public webcast scheduled for Monday afternoon, 27 March 2023, closed-door meetings will be held with the first batch of companies testing the product.

In an effort to rival ChatGPT, Baidu CEO Robin Li introduced the “Ernie bot” as a Chinese answer to the US-based AI business. There are demonstrations of Chinese AI’s various skill sets and abilities.

A statement from the company justified cancelling the webcast, stating that it needed to satisfy “strong demand” from 120,000 companies who applied to test. The company’s shares fell around 4.5% due to webcast cancellation news.