Shares of Baidu surged by more than 13% in Hong Kong as the company said it will launch its own artificial intelligence chatbot.
The stock rose to $159.80 Hong Kong dollars per share, or 13.48% higher in Asia’s morning trade. That’s the stock’s highest level since mid-Feb 2022.
The company said in a statement that its AI chatbot project will likely complete internal testing in March before being made public, and that it will be named “Ernie bot” in English or “Wenxin Yiyan” in Chinese.
Baidu’s announcement, which confirmed earlier reports, comes after Microsoft-backed ChatGPT has surged in popularity. Google recently announced a similar service, Bard A. I.
Ernie stands for “Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration,” Baidu said, describing it as a “large language model” that was introduced in 2019.
“What distinguishes ERNIE from other language models is its integration of extensive knowledge with massive data, resulting in exceptional understanding and generation capabilities,” Baidu said.
Source: CNBC
Image: Baidu
