China's Baidu has rolled out its ChatGPT rival ERNIE Bot to the public, in a major leap for the country's tech sector as it aims to cash in on the artificial intelligence gold rush. The Chinese government introduced new regulations this month for AI developers, aiming to allow them to stay in the race with the likes of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Microsoft while tightly controlling information online. ERNIE Bot is the first domestic AI app to be fully available to the public in China. It is not available outside the country. "We are thrilled to share that ERNIE Bot is now fully open to the general public starting August 31," Baidu said in a statement on Thursday.

China's tech giant Baidu has called off a livestreamed public event to promote its ChatGPT rival Ernie. Baidu, China's biggest search engine provider, said it had changed the format of the event to cater to "strong demand" from 120,000 firms that have lined up for the chance to test Ernie. Baidu unveiled Ernie to a muted reaction earlier this month, joining a rush of companies rolling out rivals to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has taken the tech world by storm since its launch last November. Baidu's shares fell after a prerecorded demonstration by Chief Executive Robin Li on March 16 showed that Ernie lacked features included in Chat GPT's follow-up GPT-4, including the ability to generate text in response to an image. The firm's shares later rebounded strongly as users shared their experiences of the platform online.