The Download: China's AI chatbots go public, and how climate change is affecting hurricanes

The news: Baidu, one of China's leading artificial-intelligence companies, has announced it's opening up access to its ChatGPT-like large language model, Ernie Bot, to the general public. The context: Launched in mid-March, Ernie Bot was the first Chinese ChatGPT rival. Since then, many Chinese tech companies, including Alibaba and ByteDance, have followed suit and released their own models. What's next: On August 30, Baidu posted on social media that it will also release a batch of new AI applications within the Ernie Bot as the company rolls out open registration today. But even with the new access, it's unclear how many people will use the products.