Baidu Scraps Fees For AI Chatbot in Battle for China Tech Supremacy (reuters.com) 8
Baidu will make its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free from April 1, the Chinese search giant said on Thursday, as it faces mounting competition in China's AI market. The company will offer desktop and mobile users free access to Ernie Bot and an advanced search function powered by its latest Ernie 4.0 model, which Baidu claims matches OpenAI's GPT-4 capabilities.
The move comes as Baidu struggles to gain widespread adoption for its AI services, lagging behind domestic rivals ByteDance's Doubao chatbot and startup DeepSeek, according to data from AI tracker Aicpb.com. Baidu previously charged 59.9 yuan ($8.18) monthly for premium AI-powered search features.
The move comes as Baidu struggles to gain widespread adoption for its AI services, lagging behind domestic rivals ByteDance's Doubao chatbot and startup DeepSeek, according to data from AI tracker Aicpb.com. Baidu previously charged 59.9 yuan ($8.18) monthly for premium AI-powered search features.
I doubt it's altruistic (Score:4, Insightful)
...more likely they want to save and mine user prompts both for snooping and testing.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't mining user prompts the whole reason behind ALL chat bots?
Re: (Score:1)
Private companies mining versus governments are two different things. Although I agree the boundary is blurry.
America's tech oligarchs keep telling us that... (Score:3)
America's tech sector is more interested in driving up energy costs than building productive products.
Re: (Score:3)
America's tech oligarchs keep telling us that they need dedicated fusion reactors, water rights and government subsidies in order to run their chatbot products. China keeps proving that it's simply not true. America's tech sector is more interested in driving up energy costs than building productive products.
I think the goal is simply resource aggregation, whether than resource be data, energy, money, public awareness, political influence, or anything else that happens to catch their attention. They want everything. Driving up energy costs for the rest of us is like what happened when Dethklok accidentally released the baby eater from prison during their show. "Yeah, dat's what ya call a happy accident."
I still haven't found a meaningful AI usage (Score:2)
Make fake images for my business? That's false advertising.
Make badly written copy? No thanks.
Write emails that sound terrible? Nah.
Get false "facts"? Please no.
I get that it's useful for programming. Otherwise, I'm not feeling it.
Re: I still haven't found a meaningful AI usage (Score:2)
Check the date (Score:2)
It's all an elaborate ruse!