Baidu opens AI chatbot to the general public after permission from the Chinese government

Baidu and some other Chinese tech companies are opening their generative AI chatbots to the general public after receiving permission from the Chinese government. As a result, Baidu’s Ernie Bot app quickly became the most downloaded app in Apple’s App Store.

The Chinese government has now approved eleven companies to make their product publicly available, reports Reuters based on Chinese reporting. In the country, tech companies must get permission from the government before AI products can be made available to the masses.

By allowing tech companies to open up their AI tools to the general public, China aims to compete in the field of artificial intelligence with the United States, where popular AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Bard and Bing Chat originate.

Baidu, SenseTime and the startups Baichuan Intelligent Technology, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, among others, made their ChatGPT-like tools available to the general public on Thursday. Baidu’s share price rose more than 3 percent after the announcement. TikTok parent company ByteDance and Tencent have also been given the green light for their AI tools. It is not clear whether Alibaba has also received permission for the public rollout of its chatbot.

Ernie Bot, Baidu’s chatbot, was opened to a limited audience in March this year. Now that the model has been released publicly, it can collect a huge amount of human feedback, which should significantly improve the basic models, according to CEO Robin Li. reports the Associated Press.