2023-10-17 08:59:49
The Chinese internet giant Baidu presented a new version of its conversational robot Ernie Bot in Beijing on Tuesday, whose capabilities are now “as good” as the American ChatGPT, its boss assured.
Launched on the market in August, Ernie, whose main language is Mandarin Chinese, marked a major step in China’s desire to be a world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.
The new version of the robot is currently only available in beta for developers by invitation.
Drastic control of content in China, however, prevents it from answering any questions on subjects considered sensitive by those in power, such as politics or the Tiananmen events.
In the style of the famous Apple conferences, Baidu founder Robin Li took the stage on Tuesday to subject his artificial intelligence robot to a session of puzzles to solve.
In an auditorium built on the site of a former steel mill, at one of the sites of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Robin Li then asks Ernie to write the outline of a martial arts novel.
The robot executes and gradually creates new characters, in front of a visibly won over audience who follows the writing in real time on a giant screen.
Ernie’s abilities in terms of “comprehension, creation, logic and memory (…) are as good as those of GPT-4”, the language model which was used to develop ChatGPT, has assured Robin Li.
The AFP was unable to independently verify these claims.
Baidu was the first in its country to announce that it was working on a local equivalent to ChatGPT, capable of formulating detailed answers on a wide range of subjects or writing essays in a few seconds.
The prowess of ChatGPT is followed with passion in China, where the American interface is nevertheless blocked without bypass software such as VPN and foreign telephone number.
Faced with this euphoria for these new tools, China announced in April that it would impose a “security inspection” on artificial intelligence tools before authorizing their marketing.
Content generated by artificial intelligence must “reflect fundamental socialist values and must not contain (elements relating to) the subversion of state power”, according to these regulations.
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