Baidu claims that on some metrics, its new AI surpasses ChatGPT

According to Baidu Inc., the most recent version of its ChatGPT-like service outperformed OpenAI chatbot in a number of crucial statistics.

On Tuesday, Baidu, China’s premier search engine provider said in a statement that Ernie 3.5, the latest iteration of its Ernie AI chatbot model, had bettered ChatGPT in comprehensive ability scores and outperformed GPT-4 in many Chinese capabilities.

Based in Beijing, the company cited a test that China Science Daily, the state-run newspaper, conducted using datasets including C-Eval and AGIEval, two benchmarks used to evaluate the performance of the AI models.

An email sent to OpenAI seeking comment outside of regular business hours was not returned.

The release of Baidu's product coincides with a global AI craze that was sparked by ChatGPT and has since spread to China, inspiring a number of domestic companies to make competitive announcements.

The first among the Chinese tech giants to debut an AI product to compete on par with ChatGPT was Baidu, which unveiled its language AI model, the Ernie Bot, in March 2023. Ernie Bot, constructed on Baidu’s previous Ernie 3.0 AI model, has been under constant testing in invite-only tests for the past three months.

Other Chinese tech giants, including Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group, have all since revealed their respective AI models.

Baidu announced that its new model comes with better inference efficiency and training, which positions the chatbot for faster and more cost-effective iterations in the future. Baidu also stated that its latest iteration of the model would support external "plugins."