Ernie Bot

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Wikipedia

Ernie Bot
Developer(s)Baidu
Initial releaseMarch 16, 2023; 2 years ago (2023-03-16)
Stable release
Ernie 4.5 / March 16, 2025; 5 months ago (2025-03-16)
Ernie X1 / March 16, 2025; 5 months ago (2025-03-16)
Operating system
TypeChatbot
LicenseApache License (Ernie 4.5)
Websiteyiyan.baidu.com

Ernie Bot (Chinese: 文心一言, Pinyin: wénxīn yīyán), full name Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration,[1] is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the Chinese technology company Baidu. It is built on the company's ERNIE series of large language models, which have been in development since 2019. The service was first launched for invited testing on March 16, 2023,[2] and was released to the general public on August 31, 2023, after receiving approval from Chinese regulators.[3]

Since its public launch, Ernie Bot has undergone several updates, with newer versions like ERNIE 4.0 and 4.5 released to improve its capabilities. The service has seen rapid user adoption, reportedly reaching over 200 million users by April 2024.[4] It has been integrated into various products, notably powering AI features for the Chinese release of Samsung's Galaxy S24 smartphones.[5]

As a product operating in China, Ernie Bot is subject to the country's censorship regulations. It has been observed to refuse answers to politically sensitive questions, such as those regarding Xi Jinping, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, and other topics deemed taboo by the government.[6][7]

History

Ernie Bot was initially released for invited testing on March 16, 2023.[8][9] The live release demo was reported to have been prerecorded, which caused Baidu's stock to drop 10 percent on the day of the launch.[10] The company's stock gained 14 percent the following day after analysts from Citigroup and Bank of America tested Ernie Bot and gave it positive preliminary reviews.[11]

On August 31, 2023, Ernie Bot was released to the public after receiving approval from Chinese regulatory authorities.[12] By December 2023, Baidu announced the service had surpassed 100 million users.[13]

In January 2024, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported that a university research lab linked to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had tested Ernie Bot for military response scenarios. Baidu denied the allegations, stating it had no connection with the academic paper.[14] That same month, Ernie was integrated into Samsung's Galaxy S24 lineup for its launch in China.[15][16]

The user base reportedly grew to 200 million by April 2024 and 300 million by June 2024.[17][18] In September 2024, Baidu changed the chatbot's Chinese name from "Wenxin Yiyan" (文心一言) to "Wenxiaoyan" (文小言) to position it as a search assistant.[19][20]

On March 16, 2025, Baidu announced version 4.5 and the reasoning model ERNIE X1.[21] The following month, at the Create2025 Baidu AI Developer Conference, the company released the Wenxin 4.5 Turbo and Wenxin X1 Turbo models, designed to be faster and less expensive to operate.[22]

Development

Ernie Bot is based on Baidu's ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration) series of foundation models. The general training process begins with pre-training on large datasets, followed by refinement using techniques like supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning with human feedback, and prompt engineering.[23]

Foundation models

  • Ernie 3.0: The model powering the initial launch of Ernie Bot. It was trained with 10 billion parameters on a 4-terabyte corpus consisting of plain text and a large-scale knowledge graph.[24]
  • Ernie 3.5: Released in June 2023. At the time of release, its performance was reported as "slightly inferior" to OpenAI's GPT-4.[25]
  • Ernie 4.0: Unveiled in October 2023 and released to paying subscribers in November. According to Baidu, this version featured improved performance over its predecessor, with information updated to April 2023.[26]
  • Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1: Announced in March 2025, with Ernie X1 positioned as a specialized reasoning model. Baidu stated that performance improvements were achieved through new technologies such as "FlashMask" dynamic attention masking and a heterogeneous multimodal mixture-of-experts architecture.[21]
  • Turbo Models: In June 2024, Baidu announced Ernie 4.0 Turbo. In April 2025, Ernie 4.5 Turbo and X1 Turbo were released. These models are optimized for faster response times and lower operational costs.[27][28]

Service

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.[29]

Ernie 4.0, the language model for Ernie bot, has information updated to April 2023.[26]

Censorship

Ernie Bot is subject to the Chinese government's censorship regime.[30][7][31] 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.[7][32][33] When queried about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, Ernie Bot stated that it originated among American vape users.[7]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Yang, Zeyi (2023-03-16). "Chinese tech giant Baidu just released its answer to ChatGPT". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 2023-09-02. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
  2. ↑ "Baidu's ChatGPT Rival Launches to Mixed Reviews". The Wall Street Journal. 16 March 2023. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 17 March 2023.
  3. ↑ David, Emilia (2023-08-31). "Baidu launches Ernie chatbot after Chinese government approval". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  4. ↑ Ye, Josh (April 15, 2024). "Baidu says AI chatbot 'Ernie Bot' has attracted 200 million users". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2024-04-18. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  5. ↑ Porter, Jon (2024-01-26). "Samsung's new phones replace Google AI with Baidu in China". The Verge. Archived from the original on 2024-02-22. Retrieved 2024-02-22.
  6. ↑ McDonell, Stephen (2023-09-08). "Elusive Ernie: China's new chatbot has a censorship problem". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2023-09-09. Retrieved 2023-09-10.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Meet Ernie, China's answer to ChatGPT". The Economist. 3 September 2023. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on 2023-09-03. Retrieved 2023-09-03. On matters of politics, by contrast, the chatbot is rather quiet. Ernie is confused by questions such as "Who is China's president?" and will tell you the name of Xi Jinping's mother, but not those of his siblings. It draws a blank if asked about the drawbacks of socialism. It often attempts to redirect sensitive conversations by saying: "Let's talk about something else." Ernie's reticence will come as no shock to Chinese users familiar with a heavily censored internet.
  8. ↑ "Baidu's ChatGPT Rival Launches to Mixed Reviews". The Wall Street Journal. 16 March 2023. Archived from the original on 20 March 2023. Retrieved 17 March 2023.
  9. ↑ "China's ChatGPT Black Market Is Thriving". Wired UK. March 7, 2023. Archived from the original on 2023-03-19. Retrieved 2023-03-17 – via www.wired.co.uk.
  10. ↑ Mozur, Paul; Liu, John; Metz, Cade (2024-02-21). "China's Rush to Dominate A.I. Comes With a Twist: It Depends on U.S. Technology". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2024-02-21. Retrieved 2024-02-22. When Baidu introduced its chatbot, Ernie, in March, the "live" demonstration was revealed to be prerecorded. Baidu's stock plummeted 10 percent that day.
  11. ↑ Toh, Michelle (March 17, 2023). "Baidu stock rebounds after falling sharply in wake of ChatGPT-style bot demo".
  12. ↑ David, Emilia (2023-08-31). "Baidu launches Ernie chatbot after Chinese government approval". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  13. ↑ Cheng, Evelyn (2023-12-29). "Baidu says its ChatGPT rival Ernie bot now has more than 100 million users". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2024-01-19. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
  14. ↑ "Tech firm Baidu denies report that its Ernie AI chatbot is linked to Chinese military research". Associated Press. 2024-01-15. Archived from the original on 2024-01-20. Retrieved 2024-01-20. The academic paper from the PLA Information Engineering University detailed how researchers had given Ernie Bot prompts to generate simulated military response plans for Libyan troops in response to a U.S. military attack.
  15. ↑ Chiang, Sheila (2024-01-26). "Baidu's Ernie AI chatbot to power Samsung's new Galaxy S24 smartphones". CNBC. Archived from the original on 2024-02-22. Retrieved 2024-02-22.
  16. ↑ Porter, Jon (2024-01-26). "Samsung's new phones replace Google AI with Baidu in China". The Verge. Archived from the original on 2024-02-22. Retrieved 2024-02-22.
  17. ↑ Ye, Josh (April 15, 2024). "Baidu says AI chatbot 'Ernie Bot' has attracted 200 million users". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2024-04-18. Retrieved 2024-06-19.
  18. ↑ Mo, Liam (June 28, 2024). "Baidu launches upgraded AI model, says Ernie Bot hits 300 mln users". Reuters. Retrieved June 28, 2024.
  19. ↑ Ben Jiang (2024-09-04). "Baidu rebrands flagship AI chatbot to stand out from rivals". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on 2024-09-06. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  20. ↑ "百度推出新搜索文小言". 第一财经 (in Simplified Chinese). 2024-09-04. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  21. 1 2 "Baidu Unveils ERNIE 4.5 and Reasoning Model ERNIE X1, Makes ERNIE Bot Free Ahead of Schedule". prnewswire. 2025-03-16. Archived from the original on 2025-03-16. Retrieved 2025-03-16.
  22. ↑ "Wenxin 4.5 Turbo, X1 Turbo, and Multiple AI Applications Released! Robin Li: Applications Create the Future". Baidu. Retrieved 2025-04-30.
  23. ↑ "Baidu Research". research.baidu.com. Retrieved 2024-06-20.
  24. ↑ Sun, Yu; Wang, Shuohuan; Feng, Shikun; Ding, Siyu; Pang, Chao; Shang, Junyuan; Liu, Jiaxiang; Chen, Xuyi; Zhao, Yanbin (2021-07-05). "ERNIE 3.0: Large-scale Knowledge Enhanced Pre-training for Language Understanding and Generation". arXiv:2107.02137 [cs.CL].
  25. ↑ Che, Chang; Wang, Olivia (2023-07-14). "What Happens When You Ask a Chinese Chatbot About Taiwan?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-03-09.
  26. 1 2 Gan, Michelle Toh, Nectar (2023-12-16). "We asked GPT-4 and Chinese rival ERNIE the same questions. Here's how they answered". CNN Business. Archived from the original on 2024-01-20. Retrieved 2024-01-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  27. ↑ Mo, Liam (June 28, 2024). "Baidu launches upgraded AI model, says Ernie Bot hits 300 mln users". Reuters. Retrieved June 28, 2024.
  28. ↑ "Wenxin 4.5 Turbo, X1 Turbo, and Multiple AI Applications Released! Robin Li: Applications Create the Future". Baidu. Retrieved 2025-04-30.
  29. ↑ "Baidu launches paid version of Ernie Bot as firms look to cash in on AI chatbots". South China Morning Post. 2023-11-01. Archived from the original on 2024-01-20. Retrieved 2024-01-20.
  30. ↑ McDonell, Stephen (2023-09-08). "Elusive Ernie: China's new chatbot has a censorship problem". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2023-09-09. Retrieved 2023-09-10.
  31. ↑ Feng, Emily (May 29, 2024). "Why China, and now Taiwan, are making their own chatbots using their own data". NPR. Retrieved May 29, 2024. ERNIE, developed by Chinese internet company Baidu. But ERNIE has to follow Chinese censorship rules and political mores, including, for example, saying in answers that Taiwan is part of China - because only training a model on data from China could make a pro-China LLM.
  32. ↑ Baptista, Eduardo (2023-03-20). "Baidu's Ernie writes poems but says it has insufficient information on Xi, tests show". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2023-09-02. Retrieved 2023-09-02.
  33. ↑ "'Talk About Something Else': Chinese AI Chatbot Toes Party Line". Voice of America. Agence France-Presse. 2023-08-31. Archived from the original on 2023-09-02. Retrieved 2023-09-01. The app is highly censored, offering state-approved answers to taboo questions and sometimes refusing to process them altogether when AFP tested the service.