A presentation on ChatGPT-like Ernie bot will no longer be streamed to the public by Chinese search engine giant Baidu on Monday, amid “strong demand”.
Baidu had been due to publicly show off its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot on Monday afternoon, but opted to move the meeting behind closed doors after interest from some 120,000 companies to test the programme.
Several private meetings will now take place to display Ernie bot products, it said, after it was officially launched in mid-March.
Ernie bot is thus-far China’s closest rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which sailed to 100mln users faster than any other application in history after its November launch.
Ernie does not offer the latest ChatGPT tech though, including the ability to generate text based off an image, prompting Baidu shares to fall 6.4% on March 16 when it was launched.
Beijing’s stringent control of China’s internet may well have hampered domestic efforts to create ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence, analysts have said, though the government has agreed to support tech firms, including Huawei, in developing the programmes.
Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) owned Google and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) have also been among firms scrambling to launch AI chatbots in response to ChatGPT’s soaring popularity.
Their respective products Bard and the self-proclaimed Sydney were quick to underwhelm though, with the former incorrectly responding to fielded questions when it was launched in February.
Microsoft’s Sydney, meanwhile, was likened to a “moody” teenager in its public testing phase, after being pushed to the limit by New York Times columnist Kevin Roose.
Baidu shares fell 3% to 149.5HKD on the news.