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Stand aside ChatGPT & Bard, make way for Ernie

US-listed shares of Baidu head south, following its HK-listed shares lower after the launch of its AI-powered Ernie bot. IG’s Angeline Ong explains what this means for the global AI race.

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Ernie bot

Stand aside ChatGPT and Bard, make way for ... Ernie bot. Created by Baidu Inc - ADR (24 Hours), it's China's challenger to the 'Who Got Bot' game. Now, why does this all matter? Well, first it pits Baidu against Alphabet Inc - A (24 Hours) Google's own AI bot called 'Bard' and Microsoft Corp (24 Hours) and OpenAI's 'ChatGPT', effectively making this a three-horse AI race.

Timing

Secondly, it comes at a pivotal time, Ernie bot's entry comes just days after Alphabet's Google lifted the cover off a bunch of AI tools for its email and cloud software.

Baidu's share reaction

Thirdly, Baidu Inc Hong Kong Listing's shares sank as much as 10%, while its CEO spoke about Ernie, before closing some 6% lower. This shaved off more than $3 billion off Baidu's market cap. Ernie will only be tested by a number of invited users from Thursday and companies can apply to embed the bot into their products via Baidu's cloud.

AI race heats up

So, the AI race is heating up, but it remains to be seen if it morphs into something else. Baidu's boss has already reiterated that Ernie is not a confrontation tool between China and the US. Ernie, for those of you wondering, stands for ''Enhanced Representation of Knowledge Integration'. What it actually becomes, remains to be seen.

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