Scheduled for release in March... Integration into search engines after launch
US and China likely to intensify competition for AI market dominance
[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Junran] Baidu, China's largest search engine company, is entering the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot market. The competition between US and Chinese tech giants to dominate the AI chatbot market is intensifying.
On the 30th, foreign media such as Reuters and Bloomberg reported that Baidu, known as the "Chinese Google," plans to launch a platform similar to OpenAI's AI chatbot "ChatGPT" in March. It explained that, like ChatGPT, users will be able to ask questions in a conversational format, and the AI will provide search results.
Reuters stated that after Baidu releases the AI chatbot as a standalone application (app), it plans to gradually integrate it with the existing Baidu search engine. The plan is to go beyond simply providing search results as links and also offer conversational explanations generated by the AI chatbot.
The name of the AI chatbot that Baidu will launch has not yet been decided. Bloomberg explained, "The 'Ernie System,' a machine learning model trained over several years, will serve as the data foundation for this service."
Baidu maintains the number one market share in China's search engine market but is expanding its investment scope to include AI as well as autonomous driving technology for future growth. Robin Li, Baidu's CEO, pointed to ChatGPT as an example of how technology companies can lead the market during an internal meeting last December.
Accordingly, Baidu plans to make the AI chatbot, which is gaining popularity among Chinese internet users, a new growth engine. According to Bloomberg, recently Chinese internet users have shown high interest by sharing conversations with AI chatbots on social media.
Although China already has AI chatbots, they are still considered limited compared to ChatGPT, which can perform specialized tasks such as essay writing and programming.
Earlier, OpenAI launched the AI chatbot ChatGPT in November last year, which provides search results in a conversational format and attracted over one million users within days. Because ChatGPT’s answers are logical and detailed, some say it could threaten existing search engines like Google.
With Baidu dominating the vast Chinese market entering the AI chatbot market, the power struggle between the US and China is expected to intensify. Microsoft also announced on the 23rd that it will make a large additional investment in OpenAI.
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