Dear clients!
Chinese tech giant Baidu on Monday canceled a planned launch of a livestream product linked to its ChatGPT-like „Ernie bot“ that was touted as being open to the media and the public.
The webcast scheduled for Monday afternoon was replaced by a private meeting with the first group of companies testing the product, Baidu mentioned in a statement Monday morning.
The reason for the format change was to meet „great demand“ from the 120 000 companies that applied to test Ernie’s bot, the company said, adding that it would be the first of many private meetings.
Shares of Baidu, listed in Hong Kong, fell 4.5% on Monday morning after the announcement of the cancellation.
Ernie bot, the closest Chinese answer to the US-developed ChatGPT so far, was launched on March 16 in a live presentation, during which journalists were introduced to a series of pre-recorded demos presenting various features of the Chinese chatbot.
