| From: Glenn Petersen | 4/11/2023 5:01:49 AM | | | | | | BIDU's chatbot gets a heavyweight competitor:
Alibaba to roll out its rival to ChatGPT across all its products
PUBLISHED MON, APR 10 202310:01 PM EDT
UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO
Sheila Chiang
CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
-- Chinese tech giant Alibaba revealed its ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen at a Tuesday summit.
-- Tongyi Qianwen will possess Chinese and English language capabilities, the tech giant said at the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit.
-- “We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, announced Tuesday it will be rolling out its own ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen.
Tongyi Qianwen, which possess Chinese and English language capabilities, will initially be deployed on DingTalk, Alibaba’s workplace communication software, and Tmall Genie, a provider of smart home appliances, the company said in a release.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba gained traded more than 3% higher after the announcement but has since pared some gains. Shares of Baidu in Hong Kong were down 6%.
At the 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit, the company said it will be rolling out the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot into all Alibaba products from enterprise communication to e-commerce in “the near future.” It did not reveal a timeline.
“We are at a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game,” said Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group and CEO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a statement.
Alibaba first told CNBC it was working on a ChatGPT rival in February.
“The new AI model will be integrated across Alibaba’s various businesses to improve user experience in the near future. The company’s customers and developers will have access to the model to create customised AI features in a cost-effective way,” the company said.
Alibaba Cloud will offer its clients access to Tongyi Qianwen on the cloud and help them build customized large language models.
The chatbot will be fine-tuned with proprietary information and data from clients, reducing resources and costs for these companies. Alibaba Cloud’s enterprise customers in China will be able to access Tongyi Qianwen for beta testing.
“We hope to facilitate businesses from all industries with their intelligence transformation and, ultimately, help boost their business productivity, expand their expertise and capabilities while unlocking more exciting opportunities through innovations,” said Jingren Zhou, CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in the release.
Developers in China can also apply for beta testing of Tongyi Qianwen to create their AI applications at scale, the company said.
Users can expect “more compelling” AI features such as image understanding and text-to-image to be added to the Tongyi Qianwen model soon.
Alibaba is the latest Chinese player after Baidu to reveal ChatGPT alternatives. Baidu revealed its own ChatGPT version, Ernie Bot, in March.
Chinese technology giants from Alibaba to Baidu to NetEase have announced their intentions to launch ChatGPT-style products.
Alibaba has maintained its position as the third leading public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provider globally since 2018, according to International Data Corporation.
The tech company also holds the positions of world’s third leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to technology research firm Gartner.
Alibaba to roll out its rival to ChatGPT across all its products (cnbc.com) |
|
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 4/28/2023 5:06:16 AM | | | | | | China’s A.I. chatbots haven’t yet reached the public like ChatGPT did
PUBLISHED FRI, APR 28 20232:37 AM EDT
Evelyn Cheng @CHENGEVELYN
CNBC.com
KEY POINTS
-- More than two months since the ChatGPT craze hit China, a similar artificial intelligence-based product has yet to reach the country’s population at large.
-- The most well-known alternatives released by Baidu, Alibaba and others have limited access with waitlists — or restricted trials to business partners.
-- ChatGPT, which learns using big data, reached an estimated 100 million monthly active users two months after launching in November.
BEIJING — More than two months since the ChatGPT craze hit China, a similar artificial intelligence-based product has yet to reach the country’s population at large.
Instead, the most well-known alternatives released by Baidu, Alibaba and others have limited access with waitlists — or restricted trials to business partners.
In what has been compared to an “iPhone moment,” ChatGPT reached an estimated 100 million monthly active users two months after launching in November. The AI-chatbot learns using big data and can generate everything from poems to business strategies in a human-like conversation.
But ChatGPT, created by U.S.-based OpenAI, isn’t available in China, where access to Twitter, Facebook and Google is also banned via the government’s internet firewall. Beijing this month also released draft rules for regulating AI-generated content, with a public comment period until May 10.
Those restrictions haven’t stopped the Chinese press and social media in general from talking frequently about ChatGPT and AI tech. Some people tried to buy overseas ChatGPT accounts on Chinese e-commerce sites.
Domestic companies rushed to release and test alternative products. Accumulating big data and machine learning experience are integral to the tech behind ChatGPT.
So far, publicly available figures indicate similar AI products in China are not as widely available.
Alibaba Cloud said Wednesday it received more than 200,000 requests from businesses to test the company’s version of ChatGPT-style tech, called Tongyi Qianwen. The product was announced on April 11.
One of those business partners, Kunlun Tech, launched the “Tiangong” on April 17 which can interact with users in a question-and-answer format. The product is currently invite-only. Kunlun claims Tiangong is the only chatbot in China with training metrics at the level of ChatGPT.
Similarly, it’s not clear how many people have gained access to Baidu’s Ernie bot.
Just under a week after its launch on March 16, the chatbot had more than 1.2 million people on a waiting list. The company stopped disclosing numbers within a few days. No update was available Friday.
When CNBC tried to sign up for Ernie bot in March, the Baidu system required a mainland Chinese phone number and local ID in order to use the chatbot. More apps in China now require ID verification, or strongly encourage it.
Baidu this week said that since Ernie bot’s launch, it had updated the product four times, and reduced costs for operating the AI model to one-tenth of what it was previously.
The public version of Ernie bot allows users to generate English and Chinese text, images and audio.
In the U.S., new AI-based products from Google and Microsoft also have waitlists. ChatGPT isn’t consistently usable due to server capacity. Some in the industry also expect such AI tools will be easier to commercialize for business products than for public tools such as search.
Development challenges
Regulatory uncertainty lingers while Beijing remains in a comment period for its generative AI draft rules. Authorities have not announced when a final version of the rules would take effect.
Outside China, the U.S. and Europe have generally been lax on ChatGPT, except for Italy, which this month banned the chatbot until OpenAI addresses privacy issues.
A bug had given ChatGPT users temporary access to other people’s conversations. OpenAI this week said it released incognito-like features that allow users to turn off chat history and opt out of having their data used for training its models.
Another challenge for companies in China will be obtaining the most advanced chips for training AI models. The U.S. in October announced stringent export bans aimed at restricting China’s access to high-end semiconductors.
A model at the level of OpenAI’s GPT-3 requires at least 1,000 Nvidia A100 graphics processing units, a kind of chip known as GPUs, to complete one 23-day round of training, HSBC analysts said in an April 20 report.
More than 30 companies and institutes in China are training such AI models, indicating “robust demand for AI server and increased spending on networking infrastructure,” the report said.
The analysts said they expect AI GPU demand in China to grow by more than 40% this year.
Another estimate, based on checks with cloud providers, predicts that demand to at least double — contributing to a “significant shortage” of chips, according to a representative of a firm investing in AI models, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
On regulation, the source said authorities are supportive of ChatGPT-style tech while planning to regulate it — companies anticipate they will need licenses to operate ChatGPT-like tech and are preparing for applications.
— CNBC’s Michael Bloom and Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.
How China's ChatGPT A.I. alternatives are doing (cnbc.com) |
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 5/16/2023 6:19:39 AM | | | | | | Chinese search giant Baidu reports better-than-expected earnings as it refocuses on ChatGPT-style services for the future
Beijing-based company reported revenue of 31.1 billion yuan for the first quarter, a 10 per cent year-on-year increaseCo-founder and CEO Robin Li says ‘emergence of generative AI and large language models present transformative potential for AI’
Tracy Qu in Shanghai
South China Morning Post
Published: 5:49pm, 16 May, 2023
Baidu, which operates China’s biggest search engine and is an artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer, beat revenue estimates for the first quarter in the company’s first earnings report since it launched its alternative to ChatGPT in March.
The Beijing-based company reported revenue of 31.1 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion) for the first quarter, a 10 per cent year-on-year increase and beating analysts’ estimates. Net income hit 5.8 billion yuan for the period, compared with a loss of 885 million yuan in the first quarter of 2022, according to results released on Tuesday.
Although the company still relies on advertising for the bulk of its revenue, Baidu has made it clear that its future lies with AI.
“We believe the emergence of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) present transformative potential for AI in various industries, to help people and organisations to achieve more and have a positive impact on society,” said Robin Li Yanhong, co-founder and CEO of Baidu.
“In light of this trend, Baidu has introduced its Ernie Bot in China, which we plan to steadily incorporate into all our businesses. This will empower our products and offerings, drawing in a larger user and customer base, while allowing us to establish a new ecosystem around the Ernie Bot for the new era,” Li said.
Baidu’s shares rose 2.8 per cent to close at HK$124 ahead of the earnings release in Hong Kong on Tuesday.
As ChatGPT – developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI – is not available for users in mainland China, Baidu has a good shot at taking a lead in the Chinese market for AI-powered chat bots.
Ernie Bot has received some good feedback for its Chinese language capabilities from netizens and won a first group of clients. During the Ernie Bot launch event in Beijing, Baidu founder Li said that while the new AI product is not perfect, the company is not waiting “because there is market demand”.
Baidu’s peers, including Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings, have also said they are developing technologies similar to ChatGPT. Alibaba, the owner of the South China Morning Post, launched its GPT model last month, opening access to selected corporate clients.
A number of start-ups have also released ChatGPT alternatives. Mobvoi Information Technology, an AI company headquartered in Beijing, launched its model last month. A Bloomberg news report said the company is preparing for a Hong Kong listing with an IPO taking place as soon as this year.
Chinese search giant Baidu reports better-than-expected earnings as it refocuses on ChatGPT-style services for the future | South China Morning Post (scmp.com) |
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Ron | 6/10/2023 10:18:57 PM | | | | | | Baidu Inc. has set aside 1 billion yuan ($140 million) to fund Chinese startups that explore generative AI, joining a global investment wave.
China’s internet search leader will use the pool to incubate projects built atop its Ernie AI model, in deployments as high as 10 million yuan apiece, Baidu said in a statement Wednesday. Venture investors including IDG Capital will take and judge pitches from founders, who then build demo products before receiving a verdict on whether they get seed funding, Baidu said.
finance.yahoo.com |
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Julius Wong | 6/21/2023 9:29:29 AM | | | | | | Baidu Inc. ( NASDAQ: BIDU):
As Morgan Stanley upgraded the stock to Overweight from Equal Weight, its $160 target price increased to $190. The consensus target is $180.69. The shares closed on Tuesday at $143.52. |
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 6/27/2023 3:36:53 AM | | | | | | Baidu Claims Its Ernie Bot Now Beats ChatGPT on Key Measures
-- China’s search leader has been an early investor in AI
-- Company won’t have to compete with OpenAI directly in China
By Zheping Huang
Bloomberg
June 27, 2023, 4:27 AM UTC
Baidu Inc.’s ChatGPT-style service has outperformed OpenAI’s seminal product on several measures, China’s search leader said on Tuesday.
Ernie 3.5, the latest iteration of Baidu’s foundation model, has surpassed OpenAI’s chatbot built on GPT-3.5 in general abilities and outperformed the more advanced GPT-4 on several Chinese-language capabilities, the company said in a statement. It cited a test by the state newspaper China Science Daily, based on datasets including AGIEval and C-Eval, benchmarks designed for evaluating such AI models.
Baidu’s new model also boosted its training and inference efficiency, making it faster and cheaper to iterate and upgrade to future versions. The company’s ChatGPT rival has been in public beta testing for the past three months.
The Beijing-based search provider debuted Ernie Bot in March as China’s first major riposte to ChatGPT, sparking a race by domestic tech firms including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to unveil rival platforms. Baidu hopes Ernie Bot — built atop its years of investment, research and development in AI technology — will become the next must-have app in the world’s largest internet arena, luring users back from all-in-one platforms like Tencent’s WeChat.
The company is integrating Ernie Bot across multiple business lines, ranging from cloud computing to smart speakers. Baidu has also set aside a $140 million venture fund to invest in OpenAI-like startups.
Chinese regulators have said that any generative AI services would need their approval before being rolled out in the country. US sanctions, in the meantime, have deprived Chinese tech firms of the best chips to train their AI models, making improvements in efficiency all the more critical.
“Foundation models are an engine driving global economic growth and represent a major strategic opportunity that cannot be missed,” Baidu’s billionaire founder Robin Li told an audience of Chinese government officials and fellow internet executives in an event Monday.
Baidu’s Ernie Beats OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Key Tests, Company Says - Bloomberg (archive.ph) |
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: Glenn Petersen | 6/28/2023 9:35:58 PM | | | | | | From Baidu Research;
Introducing ERNIE 3.5: Baidu’s Knowledge-Enhanced Foundation Model Takes a Giant Leap Forward
2023-06-27
- ERNIE Bot v2.1.0, released on June 21, is powered by ERNIE 3.5.
- One defining feature of ERNIE 3.5 is plugins, including “Baidu Search” and “ChatFile”.
- ERNIE 3.5 dramatically boosts inference throughput by an astonishing 17-fold compared to ERNIE 3.0.
We are thrilled to announce the iteration of our foundation model, ERNIE, to version 3.5. ERNIE 3.5 has made significant strides in beta testing, surpassing ChatGPT (3.5) in comprehensive ability scores and outperforming GPT-4 in several Chinese language capabilities, as reported by China Science Daily.
Just three months after the beta release of ERNIE Bot, Baidu’s large language model (LLM) built on ERNIE 3.0, ERNIE 3.5 has achieved broad enhancements in efficacy, functionality, and performance. These improvements are evident in creative writing, Q&A, reasoning, and code generation, as well as in training performance and inference performance, said Dr. Haifeng Wang, CTO of Baidu.
ERNIE 3.5 dramatically boosts training throughput by two-fold and inference throughput by an astonishing 17-fold compared to ERNIE 3.0. These upgrades will substantially accelerate our model iteration upgrades, reduce training and usage costs, and enhance user experience.
New Plugins Expand the Capabilities of ERNIE
One defining feature of ERNIE 3.5 is plugins. For example, the default built-in plugin “Baidu Search” equips ERNIE Bot with the ability to generate real-time and precise information. Another ChatFile plugin enables long text summary and Q&A. “ERNIE 3.5 expands the model’s capabilities through plugins,” Dr. Wang explained.
In the future, ERNIE Bot will add more high-quality plugins from Baidu and third parties. We are also committed to opening the plugin ecosystem to third-party developers, empowering them to build unique applications based on ERNIE.
Constant Innovation: Expanding ERNIE's Knowledge Base
In ERNIE 3.5, we’ve implemented cutting-edge strategies from PaddlePaddle, including adaptive hybrid parallel training technology and mixed-precision computing, Dr. Wang explained. These enhancements, combined with optimized data sources and data distribution, have accelerated our model’s iteration speed, bolstered its efficacy, and ensured its safety.
We’ve further improved the model performance through the multi-type multi-stage supervised fine-tuning, the multi-level multi-grain reward model, the mixed optimization of multiple loss functions, and the double-flywheel model optimization.
On top of the previous Knowledge Enhancement and Retrieval Enhancement, ERNIE 3.5 has further implemented a technique called “Knowledge Snippet Enhancement.” Specifically, the model analyzes user queries and identifies relevant knowledge snippets. It then uses knowledge graph and search engine to find corresponding answers, subsequently using these snippets to write prompts. This technique significantly enhances the model’s understanding and utilizing of world knowledge, leading to remarkable task improvements.
Additionally, we have improved the reasoning of ERNIE 3.5 in logical reasoning, mathematical computation, and code generation, through large-scale logical data construction, logical knowledge modeling, the combination of coarse-grained and fine-grained semantic knowledge, and symbolic neural networks.
ERNIE Ready for Applications
ERNIE Bot, currently in public beta testing, has been upgraded to version 2.0 since May 23. The most recent update, ERNIE Bot v2.1.0, released on June 21, added the new ChatFile plugin and improved capabilities in mathematical computations and creative writing. These enhancements are all powered by ERNIE 3.5.
Dr. Wang said that test users can access the service at any time to experience the performance of ERNIE 3.5.
“Any applications involving language, text, or code can potentially utilize ERNIE Bot,” said Dr. Wang. He elaborated that many applications are already using ERNIE Bot, spanning fields such as smart offices, coding, marketing, media, education, and finance. For example, Baidu's smart work platform, Infoflow, has unveiled several new features such as “smart summary”, “smart insights”, and “super assistant”, all derived from ERNIE Bot.
In coding, Baidu’s smart coding assistant, Comate, leverages ERNIE Bot’s capabilities to generate corresponding code snippets based on natural language prompts. Additionally, it can auto-generate code within the code editor based on comments, thereby improving development efficiency.
Baidu Research |
| | Baidu (BIDU) | Stock Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
