ChatGPT has quickly become the gold standard that other AI chatbots have been striving to reach – and defeat. Now, according to a bold statement from Chinese tech giant Baidu, another AI has apparently done so.
Baidu announced that its latest version of the ‘Ernie’ AI model, Ernie 3.5, has already beaten ChatGPT in several key metrics, according to Business Today. Baidu, the leading search engine in China, stated that Ernie 3.5 beats out ChatGPT in both comprehensive ability scores and general performance in Chinese language tasks.
It supports these claims by citing a test from state newspaper China Science Daily, which used datasets from AGIEval and C-Eval – two benchmarks for AI performance, essentially. ChatGPT creator OpenAI has apparently not responded to Business Today concerning these claims as of this writing.
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Baidu also stated that its latest Ernie model features enhanced training and inference efficiency, which it claims will make the AI faster and more cost-efficient later down the line. Lastly, the new model will support plugins, add-on applications that can perform additional tasks – like summarising lengthy text or generating more accurate answers.
TechRadar has also reached out for comment concerning Baidu’s claims against OpenAI’s ChatGPT and will update this story if and when we hear back.
Baidu competing against ChatGPT…and Google?
It’s important to note that while there’s no official English release for Ernie, Baidu’s main search engine platform itself is available in English language. The fact that it has English versions of its other services could suggest that it would be interested – and certainly capable – of bringing its Ernie AI model to the West.
Such a move would be intriguing, not only to see how well its Ernie 3.5 would actually fare against ChatGPT, but also to see how the company would deal with another rival — Google.
Google is the world’s most popular search engine, with an overwhelming market share of more than 90%. Naturally, it’s leveraging that reach to power up its own AI model, Bard, by integrating it into its search results – not to mention including elsewhere it in its Google Workspaces suite, beefing up the software’s capabilities with AI.
Baidu is China’s answer to Google (they even have Baidu Maps), and could easily do the same, leveraging its AI model to complement its search engine and drive interest in Ernie as a standalone AI service.
Of course, this would also put it in direct opposition with Google, which could result in some very intense competition – but competition can only help consumers in the end, so I welcome the idea with open arms.