Baidu Says Its AI Can Compete With GPT-4

Chinese technology firm Baidu has unveiled ERNIE 4.0, the newest version of its artificial intelligence chatbot that it directly compared to the most advanced versionof OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Company officials say the tool has significantly improved its understanding of queries, generation of complex responses, and memory capabilities.

Analysts hope this is China’s GPT-4 moment, a Mandarin large language model AI that can rival anything else in the world. For the moment, investors appear unmoved, with Baidu’s shares down 1.4% in Hong Kong immediately after the presentation.

Baidu has been a frontrunner in China in the race to capitalize on the excitement around generative AI, the technology that underpins systems such as ChatGPT or its successor, GPT-4.

Baidu faces competition within China from companies such as Alibaba and SenseTime, which have also shown off their own ChatGPT-style tools.

Baidu says its service stands out because of its advanced grasp of Chinese queries, as well as its ability to generate different types of responses, such as video and audio.

By comparison, GPT-4 is also able to analyze photos, but currently only generates text responses, according to its developer, OpenAI.

Analysts expect competition in this space to heat up, with tech leaders like Alibaba, Huawei, JD Cloud, SenseTime, and Tencent all jockeying for AI supremacy in the world’s second-largest economy.

Some critics say the new offerings from Chinese firms will add fuel to an existing US-China rivalry in emerging technologies, an idea that Baidu officials have dismissed out of hand.