Baidu Inc

Keen to increase market share, Baidu also announced that it would make its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free starting April 1, about a year and a half after introducing premium versions

The AI service will be accessible at no cost to all users on both desktop and mobile platforms, Baidu said

The new model, Ernie 5, will feature multimodal capabilities enabling it to process and convert between different formats including text, video, images and audio

It was quickly followed by Baidu, which hours later announced that its Ernie Speed and Ernie Lite models would be free for all business users

Baidu has recently intensified its efforts to boost sales from its AI-related products and services

Technology company Baidu on Monday refuted a newspaper report that said its artificial intelligence chatbot Ernie was linked to Chinese military research. Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post on Friday cited an academic paper from a university affiliated with the People's Liberation Army cyberwarfare division. The paper stated that the division had tested its artificial intelligence system on Baidu's Ernie and on artificial intelligence firm iFlyTek's Spark, both of which are language-based AI chatbots similar to ChatGPT. After its Hong Kong-listed stock plunged more than 11.5 per cent on Monday, Baidu denied the allegations, saying in a statement that it had not engaged in a business collaboration with the paper's authors or their affiliated institutions. Ernie Bot is available to and used by the general public, the Chinese company said in its statement. The academic paper from the PLA Information Engineering University detailed how researchers had given Ernie Bot prompts

The failure of the deal casts a shadow on search engine giant Baidu's ambition to diversify its revenue. The company proposed to acquire JOYY's entertainment live streaming business in China in 2020

Baidu, the leading search engine provider in China, was the country's first tech company to debut a rival product to Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT

According to experts, censors on chatbots could strengthen ideological control and further separate China digitally from the rest of the world

Thursday's launch was to have been a watershed moment for China's technology industry, lifting the lid on how AI has progressed in the world's largest internet economy

The Beijing-based company is leading a race with the likes of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to create a next-generation platform for the world's largest internet market

Baidu Inc., one of China's biggest search and artificial intelligence firms, said Wednesday it plans to implement its artificial intelligence chatbot Ernie into its search services from March. Baidu, which is known for its search engine and autonomous driving technology, leads China's efforts to create an equivalent of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot. It said earlier this month that it will complete internal testing of Ernie Bot in March before making the service public. In an internal memo, Baidu CEO Robin Li said that Ernie Bot will be integrated across all of Baidu's operations, including its search and cloud services. Baidu also plans to integrate Ernie into its smart car operating system and smart speaker. The company's stock price in New York jumped nearly 7 per cent in pre-market trading Wednesday to more than USD 150 a share. AI technology has reached a tipping point and all industries will inevitably go through transformation, Li said in the memo. Baidu stands as the best exampl

AI has found its way into a number of industries, from transportation to health. Now it is being integrated with search engines

Total revenue shrank by 5% to 29.65 billion yuan ($4.43 billion) in the second quarter, compared with analysts' average estimate of 29.30 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv data

Baidu has also secured a permit to run driverless cars on open roads in Beijing but here, the permit still requires a human operator in the front passenger seat.

Baidu plans to sell all its holdings in iQIYI, stake sale could value iQIYI at about $7 bn, say sources

Baidu, also known as China's Google, said total revenue rose to 28.13 billion yuan ($4.38 billion) in the first quarter ended March 31

Baidu has struggled to fend off competition from the likes of Tencent and ByteDance Inc., both of which are luring smartphone-savvy consumers and advertisers to their popular mini-video

The listing is expected to give the firm extra financial muscle as it squares off against rivals in the Chinese market

The company's founder livestreamed himself catching a ride in a semi-autonomous car to a conference