Baidu's ERNIE Bot now available on App Store in China

Baidu’s artificial intelligence chatbot service, ERNIE Bot is now available on Apple’s App Store in China, a check by MARKETING-INTERACTIVE saw. However, it is still not available for download in Hong Kong. 

Currently, Baidu said the app is open for internal testing only. According to Sina Tech, multiple technical tests revealed that users could log in with their Baidu account, but unauthorised users will need to apply for a test experience authorisation.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has reached out to Baidu for a statement. 

Launched in March, the ERNIE Bot is said to be able to comprehend human intentions and deliver accurate, logical, and fluent responses approaching human level. During a press conference at Baidu’s headquarters in Beijing, Baidu co-founder, chairman, and CEO, Robin Li showcased the comprehensive abilities of ERNIE Bot, in five scenarios: literary creation, business writing, mathematical calculation, Chinese language understanding, and multi-modal generation.

Wang said ERNIE Bot was developed based on the ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) and PLATO (Pre-trained Dialogue Generation Model) series models. Its key technologies include supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning with human feedback, prompt learning, knowledge enhancement, retrieval enhancement, and dialogue enhancement.

The first three are commonly used technologies in this type of LLM, which have been applied and accumulated in ERNIE and PLATO and have been further strengthened and refined in ERNIE Bot. The latter three are innovations built on Baidu's existing technological advantages and provide a solid foundation for ERNIE Bot's future growth.

Baidu possesses a diverse range of training data focused on the Chinese language, service applications, and knowledge. With supervised fine-tuning, ERNIE Bot has gained a more precise and nuanced understanding of the Chinese language and its practical applications.

Additionally, a feedback and reward mechanism with strategic optimization further enhances the model's capabilities as it receives more feedback from real users. ERNIE Bot integrates various types of data and knowledge to automatically generate prompts, including examples, outlines, standards, key concepts, and thought chains. It provides rich reference information that feeds into the model's relevant knowledge and generates high-quality results.

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