China's Baidu Makes AI Chatbot Ernie Bot Publicly Available

China's largest search engine and artificial intelligence firm, Baidu, has made its own ChatGPT-equivalent language model, Ernie Bot, publicly available.

Ernie Bot is currently operating in Mandarin, with the ability to process English input and provide limited output.

Ernie Bot is free to download on Apple's iOS store in China, and it is also available on the website here.

The making of Ernie Bot: The history of Baidu Artificial Intelligence

Baidu's AI history can be traced back to 2000, when the company established the Baidu Research Institute and started research in the field of machine learning. In 2008, Baidu established the Baidu Brain project, which aimed to collect and analyze massive amounts of data to improve the accuracy of search results and other services.

In 2010, Baidu established the Baidu AI Lab (BDL) with the goal of becoming a global leader in AI technology. The lab focuses on research and development in areas such as natural language processing, voice recognition, computer vision, and more. Baidu also collaborates with academic institutions and research organizations to further promote the development of AI technology.

In 2011, Baidu became the first Chinese company to join the Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society, an organization founded by Amazon, Facebook, Google, and others to discuss and address ethical, social, and legal issues raised by AI technology.

In 2013, Baidu established the Deep Learning Research Institute and hired Andrew Ng as its chief scientist. Ng is known for his contributions to the field of deep learning and for leading the Google Brain project.

Baidu has also applied its AI technology to areas such as healthcare, finance, transportation, and more. For example, Baidu has developed AI-powered medical diagnostic systems that can assist doctors in making more accurate diagnoses. The company has also developed autonomous driving technology for use in its Apollo autonomous vehicle platform.

Kunlun AI chip

The Kunlun AI chip, developed by Baidu, made its debut in 2021. It's built on the second-gen XPU microarchitecture, crafted using 7-nanometer technology, and packs 2 to 3 times more power than its predecessor. This chip is versatile, with applications spanning cloud, edge, and autonomous driving, giving a boost to AI tasks, high-end gaming, smart homes, and more.

Right now, Baidu's putting the Kunlun AI chip to work in their own products and services like Baidu Search and Baidu Maps.

PaddlePaddle is a deep-learning platform

PaddlePaddle is an open-source deep-learning platform developed independently by Baidu in China. It comprises a core framework, an industry-level model library, a development kit, tool components, and learning and training communities aimed at supporting standardized and automated model production and application.

This platform is the early foundation for Ernie Bot and the future AI product for Baidu.

Powerful add-ons: Ernie Bot's developing feature

ChatFile: Simplified Documents

ChatFile is an add-on that allows you to upload any documents or PDFs, and the Ernie bot will extract the general information about what the document is about as well as all the key points mentioned. In addition to that, you can ask any specific follow-up questions as long as there is an answer in the document

ChatFile can comprehensively understand natural language, supporting various formats and languages. It aids employees in quickly locating the needed knowledge and resources, preventing redundant efforts, and boosting work efficiency. Through machine learning and training, it continuously adapts and optimizes to enhance knowledge reasoning and answer generation.

Apache Echarts: Data graphing tool

Apache Echarts is an add-on that can provide you with data sets and various graphs. For example, you can ask for data on the global population, and Ernie Bot will gain data from its cloud database with the specific graph you want.

ECharts supports a variety of chart types such as line charts, bar charts, pie charts, scatter plots, and more. It enables flexible customization of chart styles and interactive behaviors. Additionally, ECharts provides abundant data interfaces, making it convenient for developers to dynamically update and manipulate data.

Image Analyzation

Image analysis is an add-on that allows you to upload an image to Ernie Bot, who will quickly analyze the image and provide a detailed description of what is happening as well as some other relative information.

In addition to that, this add-on can generate content derived from the image provided. For example, if you upload a picture of your product, Ernie Bot can write a description of it and write an AD campaign for your product.

Closing Words

Erin Bot is a natural outcome of Baidu's years of technological evolution and real-world experience.

Back in 2019, the Big Model ERNIE started small, with natural language understanding as its specialty, but it quickly evolved into a versatile platform and will continue to tackle various languages, modes, and tasks.