Image source: China Visual

BEIJING, February 7 (TMTPOST) —— ERNIE Bot, an artificial intelligence chatbot service similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT to be launched by Baidu, will be available to the public in March, according to the company’s announcement made on Tuesday.

Shares of Baidu surged by more than 13% in Hong Kong as the company announced it will launch its artificial intelligence chatbot.

The stock price rose to $159.80 Hong Kong dollars per share, or 13.48% higher in Asia's morning trade, which is the stock's highest level since mid-Feb 2022.

Baidu CEO Robin Li said that AI development had "changed direction at both the technical level and the commercial application level" in a public speech last September. It is said that Baidu has been developing ERNIE Bot since then.

The Beijing-based company has spent billions of dollars researching AI in a years-long effort to transition from online marketing to deeper technology. Baidu has accumulated strengths in technology covering deep learning algorithms and frameworks, AI-powered chips, and language training models.

The company researched ChatGPT-related technologies before and has invested a large amount of money in developing its Ernie system. This is a large-scale machine-learning model that has been trained on massive data over several years and possesses in-depth semantic comprehension and generation capabilities.

According to an insider familiar with Baidu, the company has been preparing for getting ERNIE Bot online. Considering the speed of Google and Microsoft to develop their AI applications, ERNIE Bot's closed beta test may be launched ahead of time.

ChatGPT, OpenAI's artificial intelligence tool, has attracted estimated 100 million monthly active users since its public debut in November, making it the fastest-growing consumer app in history, according to a research report published by UBS.  Industry insiders said that ChatGPT's popularity has become a milestone and watershed in the development of the artificial intelligence industry, marking that the development of AI technology has reached a certain critical point.