Family | Generative pre-trained transformer |
---|---|
Developer | Baidu |
Website | yiyan |
Ernie Bot (Chinese: 文心一言, wénxīn yīyán), full name Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration,[1] is an AI chatbot service product of Baidu, under development since 2019. It is based on a large language model named "Ernie 4.0", announced on October 17, 2023.[2]
Ernie Bot was initially released on March 16, 2023, based on "Ernie 3.0 Titan", a language model that had been in development since 2019.[3][4][5] Ernie's so-called live release demo was reported to have been prerecorded, which caused Baidu's stock to drop 10 percent the same day.[6]
On March 20, 2023, Baidu announced on its official WeChat that Wenxin Yiyan cloud service was supposed to be available on March 27, but the launch was delayed to an unknown date.[7]
"Ernie 3.0", the language model, was trained with 10 billion parameters of 4 terrabyte (TB) corpus which consists of plain texts and a large-scale knowledge graph.[8] It was then updated to "Ernie 3.5" in June 2023, but it was "slightly inferior" to Open AI's GPT-4.[9] As a response, "Ernie 4.0" was unveiled in October and was released for paying subscribers in November of the same year.[10]
Baidu claimed that Ernie bot received more than 100 million users as of December 2023.[11][12]
In January 2024, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had tested Ernie for military response plans with scenarios involving the United States. After its listed stock in Hong Kong plunged by more than 11.5 percent, Baidu made an official statement denying the allegations.[11] The same month, Ernie was integrated for the Chinese launch of Samsung's Galaxy S24 lineup.[13][14]
In its subscription options, the professional plan gives users access to Ernie 4.0 with a payment either for a month or with reduced payment for auto-renewal per month. Meanwhile, Ernie 3.5 is free of charge.[15]
Ernie 4.0, the language model for Ernie bot, has information updated to April 2023.[10]
Ernie Bot is subject to the Chinese government's censorship regime.[16][17] In public tests with journalists, Ernie Bot refused to answer questions about Xi Jinping, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the persecution of Uyghurs in China in Xinjiang, and the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests.[17][18][19] When queried about the origin of COVID-19, Ernie Bot stated that it originated among American vape users.[17]