Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU) drops around 2% in pre session on Wednesday as the firm announces that it will report its financial results for the Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2022 ended December 31, 2022, prior to the opening of the U.S. market on February 22, 2023. Baidu’s management will hold an earnings conference call on February 22, 2023, at 7:30 a.m., U.S. Eastern Time (8:30 PM on February 22, 2023, Beijing Time).
On the other hand, interest in generative artificial intelligence grew, Baidu, Inc (BIDU) planned to complete internal testing of a ChatGPT-style project called “Ernie Bot” in March. Baidu intends to make the service a standalone application before gradually incorporating chatbot-generated results when users make search requests into its search engine. Baidu made significant investments in AI technology, such as cloud services, chips, and autonomous driving, in order to diversify its revenue sources.
Baidu stock rose on Tuesday after the Chinese search engine operator announced plans to launch a ChatGPT-like robot next month. Baidu’s Nasdaq-listed American depositary receipts were up more than 13% in premarket trading, mirroring a rise in the company’s Hong Kong-listed stock.
Baidu joins the global race to commercialize AI by developing its own artificial-intelligence powered chatbot, the “Ernie bot,” in competition with other technology behemoths such as Google.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Baidu plans to release an AI-powered chatbot and integrate it into its search engine in March. This year, Baidu’s Hong Kong stock has risen 45%, compared to roughly 20% gains for Chinese tech heavyweights Alibaba and Tencent.
The news suggests that Baidu is close to releasing a product that can compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool, which has had a significant impact since its release in November. In China, Baidu’s home market, ChatGPT is not widely available.
The AI space is becoming increasingly competitive, with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) supporting OpenAI and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) developing its own in-house tool for improving search and text composition. Others, including Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), have set aside significant funds for the development of AI-powered functions.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, announced on Monday that his company will begin gathering user feedback on a conversational AI service called Bard, with the goal of making it publicly available within weeks. Pichai stated in a blog post on Monday that Bard would use data from the Internet, complementing the capabilities of Google’s search function.
Pichai stated that “Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity” of Alphabet’s in-house capabilities.
LaMDA, the AI project that generated text so well in a test last year that one of its engineers dubbed it “sentient,” powers Google’s new chat tool. The company has made no such claims for LamDA.
Meanwhile, Microsoft announced plans for its own AI update on Tuesday, which will be attended by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
