It is understood that Baidu’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ‘Hernybot’, which attracted attention because the Chinese version of ‘ChatGPT’, is currently waiting for approval from the Chinese government.

Reuters reported on the sixteenth (local time), citing a phone call between Baidu Chairman and CEO Li Yanhong and an analyst, that Baidu has applied for presidency review and approval of Anibot and is planning a large-scale official launch later.

Based on this, CEO Li Yehong said, “We had close discussions with regulators while testing Erniebot,” adding, “We’re confident that Erniebot won’t make mistakes on necessary and sensitive issues.”

“Many players have entered China’s generative AI and LLM market, but there are ‘very high barriers to entry,'” he said, stating that it should be difficult for other players to realize government approval.

“Baidu has been running a search service for 20 years and has wealthy experience in Chinese culture and regulation,” he said. will do,” he said.

China’s regulators last month released draft regulations for services powered by generative AI, akin to Erniebot, saying that the content they generate must align with the country’s core socialist values.

On the time of its first release in March, Erniebot released a pre-filmed demo video slightly than a real-time demonstration, causing a stock price decline, and no news in regards to the official release was reported until two months after that.

However, CEO Lienhong drew attention by revealing that despite US export restrictions, “We’ve been learning Erniebot by securing a substantial amount of computing power, including the most recent GPU.”

Reporter Lim Dae-jun ydj@aitimes.com