Baidu Joins Global AI Race With Development of ChatGPT

Baidu Inc., a Chinese company, saw its stock prices dip by 0.44%.
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As artificial intelligence technology continues to evolve, companies are racing to commercialize the next generation of AI. ChatGPT is one example of a potentially transformative AI technology that could have a major impact on the internet.
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The company is developing an AI-powered chatbot similar to OpenAI's popular ChatGPT. According to sources familiar with the matter, the company plans to integrate the chatbot into its main search engine in March.
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Baidu's move to develop its own version of the technology would place it among a few global tech companies with this capability. The technology has generated a lot of interest among consumers and businesses, and has placed pressure on incumbents to update their product-development strategies.
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Baidu is set to be the first to bring the technology to consumers in China. The state censors the internet and blocks access to ChatGPT, so this will be a big step forward for the company.
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Baidu's plans come as the competition between Washington and Beijing to bolster their respective countries' leadership in strategic emerging technologies intensifies.
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OpenAI's ChatGPT is built on top of a core breakthrough that Google developed in 2017 - an algorithm that Baidu has also adapted and is now using as the foundation for its chatbot, according to some sources. This highlights the fluid, cross-border nature of AI research, where open-source is the norm.
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In a speech to employees in late December, Chief Executive Robin Li mentioned ChatGPT as a new opportunity for the company, according to a transcript on Baidu's internal website that was seen by The Wall Street Journal.
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"We have some really cool technology, but can we turn it into a product that everyone needs?" Mr. Li said, referring to AI-driven technologies including the chatbot. "This is actually the hardest step, but also the most important and influential."
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Baidu is planning something big, according to Bloomberg. No details have been released yet, but it's sure to be something big from the Chinese tech giant. Stay tuned for more details.
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Baidu, which has lagged behind its Chinese internet peers in terms of growth, is now trying to reinvent itself as an AI company. It has invested billions of dollars in cutting-edge technologies like self-driving cars and AI-powered chips.
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Google has been at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) research for many years. Using its vast repository of text data from its search-engine business, it has focused in particular on an area of AI research known as natural-language processing. This area of AI has experienced major leaps in advancement in the past few years, leading to the recent surge of AI technologies, including ChatGPT.
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Baidu has developed a deep-learning model known as Ernie, which it has used to improve its search results. The company has since developed dozens more Ernie models and extended their capabilities to include image and art generation.
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Baidu is now using Ernie as the foundation for its chatbot, and is training it on both Chinese- and English-language sources inside and outside China’s firewall, some of the people said. In the past, Baidu has trained Ernie using sources that include Wikipedia, BookCorpus, Reddit and Baidu’s ecosystem of products—such as Baidu Baike and Baidu News—according to its open-source research papers. Ernie is constantly learning from these sources and improving its conversational skills.
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Baidu is planning to limit its chatbot’s outputs in accordance with the state’s censorship rules, one of the people said. OpenAI is also applying restrictions to ChatGPT’s outputs in an effort to avoid toxic hate speech and politically sensitive topics.
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ChatGPT is a chatbot that has been trained on vast amounts of text data from the internet. It is capable of answering all manner of user questions in fluent conversational prose. However, the chatbot cannot guarantee accurate answers and at times has delivered sexist or racist comments, industry researchers have said.
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As chatbots become more advanced, tech companies are racing to integrate them into their products. ChatGPT, which can hold conversations, is seen as having the most potential to disrupt the status quo in search.
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Microsoft has announced new investment in OpenAI, totaling up to $10 billion. This infusion of cash will be used to develop ChatGPT, a natural language processing tool.

Microsoft plans to integrate ChatGPT into its existing products, such as Bing.
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Google's LaMDA technology made its debut in 2021, and Meta Platforms Inc. released a chatbot known as Blenderbot in 2020. Neither company has revealed plans to integrate the technology into their platforms.