China's Baidu to launch ChatGPT-style AI bot called 'Ernie'. Details here

China's Baidu Inc said on Tuesday it would complete internal testing of a ChatGPT-style project called "Ernie Bot" in March, joining a global race as interest in generative artificial intelligence gathers steam. The person said Baidu aims to make the service available as a standalone application and gradually merge it into its search engine by incorporating chatbot-generated results when users make search requests. The company has also worked to add OpenAI's image-generation software to its Bing search engine in a new challenge to Alphabet Inc's Google. In a blog post on Monday, Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said his company is opening a conversational AI service called Bard to test users for feedback, followed by a public release in the coming weeks, adding that Google plans to add AI features to its search engine that synthesize material for complex queries.