Shares plummet after Ernie Bot AI chatbot software falls short of expectations at unveiling in Beijing
The Chinese search engine company Baidu’s shares have fallen by as much as 10% after the company unveiled its ChatGPT-like AI software, with investors unimpressed by the bot’s display of linguistic and maths skills.
The artificial intelligence-powered ChatGPT, created by the San Francisco company OpenAI, has caused a sensation for its ability to write essays, poems and programming code on demand within seconds, prompting widespread fears over cheating or of professions becoming obsolete.
Chinese tech companies have joined the global rush to develop rival software, with Alibaba and JD.com also announcing similar projects.
But Baidu’s Ernie Bot, unveiled at a press event in Beijing on Thursday, fell short of expectations, with the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Robin Li, showing only a pre-recorded demonstration of the software’s capabilities, rather than a live interaction.
The company showed audiences a video of the bot answering questions about popular the Chinese science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem and generating a plot summary. It also showed off Ernie Bot’s algebra skills and generated audio in Sichuanese and Hakka dialects of Chinese.
