China's Baidu unveils ChatGPT rival ERNIE

Taipei, Taiwan – Chinese search engine giant Baidu has revealed its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot ERNIE, the latest rival to OpenAI's groundbreaking ChatGPT. Baidu Chief Executive Robin Li said on Thursday that ERNIE, known as Weixin in Chinese, was the result of "decades of Baidu's hard work and efforts" at a live streamed press conference held to show off the technology's capabilities. "In two rounds of conversation, the ERNIE bot presented its capability of mathematical logic reasoning," Li said. "It does not only know whether the question itself is correct or not, it also provided answers and specific steps to figure out the answer." At the event in Beijing, Li showed ERNIE generating a conference poster and video based on a prompt, offering advice on the best location for the event among several Chinese cities, and read material in a Sichuan dialect.