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Ernie is another competitive ChatGPT rival. Ever since OpenAI launched the viral AI bot in the market, several tech giants have released their respective versions of AI-powered chatbots- whether it is Microsoft’s Bing AI, Orca or Google’s Bard and Gemini. Even Meta recently launched its AI bot, although it is yet to be released for public usage.

Last year, Baidu (the Chinese search engine) released Ernie Bot which stands for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration. This AI bot is grabbing attention again as Baidu announced its chatbot service has attracted more than 200 million users within 8 months of its launch. Here is a little overview of this AI chatbot and how it compares to ChatGPT.

What is Baidu’s Ernie?

As stated earlier, Ernie is an AI chatbot released by Baidu based on a large language model. Initially, its LLM was Ernie 3.0 Titan. Later it was updated to “Ernie 4.0” and introduced in October last year for paid subscribers. According to rumours, Ernie’s LLM is much larger than ChatGPT as it is trained on 260 billion parameters whereas OpenAI’s GPT-3 is trained on more than 100 billion parameters.

TechTarget suggests that the bot may have been trained on 10 trillion parameters and works best in the Mandarin language but supports other languages as well.

Ernie Bot’s journey

Ever since its public release, Ernie grabbed eyeballs as it is China’s most popular ChatGPT-like AI bot. Robin Li, CEO of Baidu has revealed that their chatbot’s application programming interface (API) is being used around 200 million times daily. This number shows how many times this AI tool was requested to complete tasks.

In December 2023, Baidu reportedly stated the Ernie bot crossed 100 million users (which is doubled as of now). In a conference held in Shenzhen, the CEO revealed they had secured 85,000 enterprise users. While Ernie was developed in March 2023, it was publically launched in August last year after getting approval.

This is a standard procedure for all generative AI products created in China that need permission from regulators. So far, 40 AI models have received the green signal from Chinese authorities state news reports and highlighted by Reuters.

Ernie 4.0 is exclusively available for paid monthly subscribers and Ernie 3.5 is free to use.

Ernie Vs ChatGPT

Ernie AI bot aims to surpass OpenAI’s GPT-4; frankly, that is what most tech giants wish to do. Let’s quickly review the differences between these two big LLM-based generative AI bots.

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Battle of the languages

Both Ernie and ChatGPT support multiple languages. OpenAI’s GPT initially focused on English prompts but was soon updated to function in 26 languages. On the other hand, Ernie can handle tasks in Mandarin and English. However, Ernie can be incorporated into existing systems and utilised in various languages.

Winning features

Ernie and GPT have almost similar or head-to-head user cases. Both can be used to automate tasks, generate various media content, etc. Although a detailed review by Chatonai suggests that Ernie is better than ChatGPT when it comes to use and integration with systems it supports various languages making it an ideal AI bot for customer service. However, the same review also highlighted that ChatGPT had the upper hand in being a great virtual assistant to complete tasks.

Training data

Any generative AI bot responds according to what it has been trained with. Since Ernie and GPT were trained on big parameters, their methods may vary which also affects the way these AI bot functions. The latest GPT-4 AI consist of 1.76 trillion parameters and Ernie is said to have parameters in the range of 260 billion to 10 trillion.

Well, it remains to be seen which AI bot will finally win the popularity and functionality race in the long run. Stay tuned.