China’s Baidu Pulls Public Launch of ChatGPT Rival Ernie Bot
The company oddly claimed “strong demand” was to blame.
Tingshu Wang/Reuters
A public launch event for a new Chinese rival to ChatGPT scheduled for Monday has been canceled. Baidu, China’s largest search engine provider, said the demonstration of its “Ernie” bot would instead take place at a closed-door meeting with companies that are testing the AI-powered tool. Baidu said in a statement that the format change of the event would cater to “strong demand” from 120,000 companies that have already applied to try Ernie. The chatbot was initially unveiled earlier this month at an event in which journalists were shown prerecorded demonstrations of the software’s capabilities.
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