Baidu, one of China’s leading Artificial Intelligence companies, announced that it would open access to its ChatGPT-like large language model, Ernie Bot, to the general public.
This announcement has been awaited for a long time. Launched in mid-March, Ernie Bot was ChatGPT’s first Chinese rival. Since then, many Chinese technology companies, including Alibaba and ByteDance, have followed suit and launched their own models. However, all of them forced users to be on waiting lists or go through approval systems, making the products inaccessible to ordinary users — a possible result, it was suspected, of limits imposed by the Chinese state.
On August 30, Baidu posted on social media that it will also launch a batch of new AI applications within Ernie Bot after the company opens the registration process.
Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg reported that regulatory approval will be given to “a group of companies, including startups and big tech names.” Sina News, a Chinese publication, reported that eight Chinese generative AI chatbots have been included in the first batch of services approved for public launch.
ByteDance, which launched the Doubao chatbot on August 18, and the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which launched Zidong Taichu 2.0 in June, are also included in the first group. Other models from Alibaba, iFLYTEK, JD and 360 are not included.
When the Ernie Bot was released on March 16, the reaction was a mix of excitement and disappointment. Many people considered its performance to be mediocre compared to the previously released ChatGPT.
But most people just couldn’t see it on their own. The launch event did not feature a live demo, and later, to actually try the bot, Chinese users needed to have a Baidu account and apply for a usage license that could take up to three months to be issued. Because of this, some people who got early access were selling second-hand Baidu accounts on e-commerce sites, charging anywhere from a few dollars to more than $100.
More than a dozen Chinese generative AI chatbots were launched after Ernie Bot. They are all very similar to their Western counterparts in that they are able to converse in text, answer questions, solve math problems (in some way), write programming codes, and write poems. Some of them also allow input and output in other formats, such as audio, images, data visualization or radio signals.
Just like Ernie Bot, these services came with restrictions on user access, making the experience difficult for the general public in China. Some were only permitted for commercial use.
One of the main reasons Chinese technology companies limited access to the general public was concerns that the models could be used to generate politically inappropriate information. While the Chinese government has demonstrated itself to be extremely capable of censoring social media content, new technologies such as generative AI could take the censorship machine to unknown and unpredictable levels. Most current chatbots, like those from Baidu and ByteDance, have built-in moderation mechanisms that refuse to answer sensitive questions about Taiwan or Chinese President Xi Jinping, but a general rollout to the 1.4 billion people in the China would almost certainly allow users to find smarter ways to bypass censors.
When China released its first regulation specifically targeting generative AI services in July, it included a line asking companies to obtain “relevant administrative licenses,” although at the time the law did not specify what licenses it referred to.
As reported by Bloomberg, the approval Baidu received was issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the region’s top internet regulatory body, and will allow companies to roll out their ChatGPT-style services across the country. But the agency has not officially announced which companies have obtained the public access license or which have applied for it.
Even with the new access, it’s unclear how many people will use the products. The lack of initial access to Chinese chatbot alternatives has diminished the public’s interest in them. Although ChatGPT has not been officially launched in China, many Chinese people are able to access the OpenAI chatbot using VPN software.
“By making Ernie Bot available to hundreds of millions of Internet users, Baidu will collect enormous, valuable real-world human feedback. This will not only help improve the creation model, but also improve Ernie Bot at a much faster pace, leading to a superior user experience,” said Robin Li, CEO of Baidu, according to a press release from Baidu. company.
fonte/credito: MIT Technology Review
