Baidu to deploy conversational AI throughout search, in-car leisure and extra

Baidu right now revealed extra particulars about its much-anticipated clever Ernie Bot, extensively seen because the search large’s counterpart to ChatGPT. Ernie Bot is constructed atop Baidu’s massive language mannequin Erniethat launched in 2019. In Might final yr, the third technology of Ernie launched.

Right here’s how Baidu plans to combine Ernie Bot into its ecosystem of providers, stated the agency’s founder and CEO Robin Li in a letter to workers right now.

“The mixing of ERNIE Bot with Baidu Search will result in a generational change within the search expertise.” Sounds acquainted? This can doubtless be one thing akin to Bing with ChatGPT inbuilt.

“Along with offering higher search service and solutions, we’ll supply a brand new interactive and chat expertise, in addition to present uniquely generated content material that may enormously enrich the content material ecosystem and provide, changing into a brand new visitors entry level.”

This half is a bit obscure, however it might need one thing to do with Baidu’s content material distribution platform, which is presently provided by a community of reports companies, company accounts and particular person bloggers. May Ernie Bot be used to generate extra personalised content material for customers?

“ERNIE Bot will even present providers to the general public via Baidu AI Cloud. Beforehand, the selection of cloud distributors was based mostly totally on primary cloud providers resembling computing energy and storage. Sooner or later, the main target shall be on the framework, the mannequin, and the synergy between the mannequin, framework, chip and utility. This shift will essentially rewrite the foundations of the sport within the cloud computing market.”

This seems to reflect the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI, via which Azure’s prospects can entry the AI lab’s applied sciences.

Lastly, Baidu plans to spice up its in-car voice assistant with Ernie. The search large has over the previous few years developed an working system for good autos referred to as Apollo — suppose Android for vehicles — and made some purposes in-house, together with Xiaodu.

“ERNIE Bot can also be being put in on the Apollo Sensible Cabin product collection, taking good vehicles a technology forward by way of the human-vehicle interplay expertise. The mixing of ERNIE Bot with Xiaodu will considerably broaden Xiaodu’s capacity to converse with customers, making it smarter and extra understanding, and permitting it to offer extra versatile clever help to customers.”

No matter Ernie Bot’s efficiency, it should cope with the nation’s censorship regime like several generative AI product working in China. How can it guarantee its algorithmic black field doesn’t breach China’s ever-changing censorship guidelines? It is going to want a layer of content material filtering on prime of its chatbot, simply as current media platforms reasonable content material by using robots and human auditors. However in the long run, having such constraints might compromise the consumer expertise of a supposedly free-wheeling generative AI.

Extra updates to come back…