Baidu Ernie Bot Statistics

Baidu's ERNIE Bot emerges as a pioneering force in China's artificial intelligence sector, celebrated for its remarkable achievements and the evolution of its cutting-edge ERNIE 4.0 model. The outstanding usage statistics of ERNIE Bot are explored in this article, along with a comparison of its performance with other top AI chatbots such as ChatGPT. Providing insights into its parent company, Baidu, the article explores the widespread acceptance of ERNIE Bot in China and its transformative impact on the AI landscape. Beyond traditional chatbot functionalities, ERNIE Bot's fascinating real-world applications across diverse domains are unveiled, shedding light on its versatility and contributing to a deeper understanding of its role in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.

1. Top ERNIE Bot Highlights

1). ERNIE stands for “Enhanced Representation from Knowledge Integration”.

2). ERNIE Bot is the first domestic AI app to be fully available to the public in China (Source).

3). The Baidu bot is prompted to generate queries more than 200 million times a day, giving it its rightful title as the most popular AI model in China. (Source and Source).

4). ERNIE Bot 4 is a larger LLM than GPT-4, rumored to have more than 10 trillion parameters compared to GPT-4's 1.76 trillion parameters. (Source)

5). At one point, Baidu’s Ernie Bot was the most downloaded free application available in China’s mobile Apple Store (Source).

6). As of April 2024, Ernie chatbot had surpassed 200 million users. By June 2024, Reuters reported that this number had climbed to 300 million users. In comparison, as of August 2024, ChatGPT reported that it had 200 million weekly users. (Source) 

7). ERNIE Bot's applications include search, AI cloud, and autonomous driving (Source).

2. ERNIE Bot in relation to the Artificial Intelligence Market in China

What does ERNIE stand for?

• ERNIE stands for “Enhanced Representation from Knowledge Integration”.

Who created Ernie Bot?

• Baidu is the first major Chinese tech company to unveil a comprehensive AI chatbot service, Ernie Bot, that has the potential to rival ChatGPT (Source).
• Ernie Bot’s launch event took place just a day after OpenAI released its new AI model, GPT-4 (Source).
• Baidu is the first among international tech giants to release a ChatGPT alternative developed internally. Microsoft just uses OpenAI access. Google, Meta, Amazon. None of these has released a product of the same kind and at the same level (Source).

When was Ernie Bot launched?

• The first version of ERNIE was introduced and open-sourced in 2019 by researchers at Tsinghua University to demonstrate the natural language understanding capabilities of a model that combines both text and knowledge graph data (Source).
• Later in 2019, Baidu released ERNIE 2.0 which became the first model to set a score higher than 90 on the GLUE benchmark for evaluating natural language understanding systems (Source).
• Baidu introduced ERNIE Bot, its latest generative AI product and knowledge-enhanced large language model (LLM), on March 16, 2023 (Source).

Is ERNIE Bot accessible outside China?

• ERNIE Bot is the first domestic AI app to be fully available to the public in China. It is not available outside the country (Source).
• The National Library of China and other government departments are planning to use ERNIE for organizing their data (Source).

How big is the Artificial Intelligence Industry in China?

In 2021, China's AI industry, supported by billions since ChatGPT, received 400 million yuan in investments. Government designates AI as a key technology, expecting a fourfold increase in the next four years (Source).

• Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, aims to become a global leader in the artificial intelligence industry by 2030, rivaling the United States of America (Source).
• China made significant progress in developing the AI industry, having invested more than $91 billion so far, but has been overtaken by the United States with more than $300 billion worth of investments. Europe takes the third place with about $45 billion invested in AI development. (Source)
• China's AI market is projected to reach $104.70bn USD by 2030, while that of the USA, is projected to reach $237.10bn USD.

• As of July 2024, Forbes notes that China has filed for substantially more AI patents than the United States. (Source)
• Since 2014, China has filed 38,000 AI patents. In contrast, the US has filed 6,300 AI patents since 2014. (Source)
• Globally, more than 50,000 generative AI patents have been filed over the course of the last decade. (Source)

• China currently boasts 79 large language models (LLMs) launched since 2020, according to Reuters. Combined, the article notes that the LLMs launched by both the US and China comprise 80% of the LLMs in the world. (Source)

• Almost 80 organizations in China have launched their own Large Language Models (LLMs) since 2020.

How Many People Use Social Media in China?

• Social media platforms serve a pivotal role in China’s digital landscape, with over 1.06 billion estimated user base, a whopping 74.2% of the country's population (approximately 1.426 billion people). Content creation can be especially overwhelming because of the country’s segmented market, so Ernie Chatbot can offer assistance in generating campaign ideas that align with local consumer needs (Source and Source).

Is the Artificial Intelligence Industry in China regulated?

• 70 generative AI models were commercially launched within the first 30 days after China regulated its generative AI industry (Source).

3. Metrics on ERNIE Bot's Usage

How did people respond to Ernie Bot’s Launch?

• According to official platform data, during the period from 0:00 to 24:00 Beijing time on August 31st, ERNIE Bot replied to over 33.42 million questions from netizens (Source). 
• It also had over one million daily active users within the first 19 hours of its release for download (Source).
• More than 30,000 corporate users applied for the ERNIE Bot Enterprise Edition API testing within an hour of its launch event.
• During its first 24 hours of operation, Baidu’s ERNIE Bot received an average of 23,000 questions per minute (Source).
• Ernie Bot launched a waitlist in March 2023, drawing in over 1.2 million users.

How Many People Use Ernie Bot?

• As of June 2024, Ernie Bot, the Chinese counterpart to OpenAI's ChatGPT, has attracted more than 300 million users (which continues to climb from previous reports estimating 200 million users) and also supports 14.65 million developers (Source).
• Baidu's ERNIE Bot is now handling 200 million queries daily, with thousands of enterprises working on Baidu’s services.
• Before its official rebranding to “Wenxiaoya,” Ernie Bot took second place as the most downloaded app in the country, closely trailing ByteDance’s Doubao software. (Source and Source)
• Baidu’s Ernie Bot is available to hundreds of millions of Internet users.

4. Facts on ERNIE 4.0

What is Ernie 4.0?

• Baidu's Ernie 4.0 AI model emerges as a robust competitor to OpenAI's GPT-4, featuring multilingual capabilities, video creation, adept code generation, and seamless knowledge graph integration (Source).
• During a demonstration, Ernie 4.0 effortlessly produced text, images, and video ads—capabilities beyond ChatGPT's current scope—in just a matter of minutes for a car company (Source).
• ERNIE 4.0 can act as a one-person ad team, solve tough math problems, and come up with story ideas.
• When asked to write a multi-chapter novel, ERNIE kept the characters and plot points consistent across several dialogues (Source).

How Does Baidu Use Ernie 4.0?

• Baidu wants to use ERNIE 4.0 in its search engine and other tools to give personalized answers, not just links (Source).
• ERNIE 4.0 is tightly woven into Baidu’s ecosystem, like search and business analytics. It’s also getting a lot of love from Chinese government departments (Source).
• Ernie 4.0 can retrieve up-to-date information from the web and is being incorporated into various Baidu offerings to enhance user experiences (Source).

What Language does Ernie 4.0 operate in?

• This AI model operates predominantly in Mandarin Chinese, its native language, and also in English, albeit with slightly lower proficiency (Source).

Does Ernie 4.0 face Competition within China?

• While Baidu steps forward with ERNIE 4.0, it faces competition within China from Alibaba and SenseTime, which are also creating AI models similar to ChatGPT (Source).
• What sets Baidu apart is its profound understanding of Chinese queries and its capability to produce varied response types, including video and audio (Source).

Is Ernie 4.0 available to the general public?

• Ernie 4.0 is not yet available to the general public, but Baidu has already invited some people to trial the new model (Source).

5. ERNIE Bot in Comparison to ChatGPT and other AI Chatbots

What’s the Most Popular AI Chatbot?

• OpenAI began to lead the race among many AI companies globally,when they were given the green light to launch ChatGPT on November 30, 2022 (Source).

What is the Chinese equivalent of OpenAI?

• Baidu, the dominant internet search company in China, became the first major foreign contender in the A.I. race in March, with its introduction of Ernie chatbot (Source).
• Baidu, China's equivalent to Google, entered the scene a day after Google introduced Bard (Source).

Does Ernie Bot have more Data than ChatGPT?

• Ernie Bot 4 is a larger LLM than GPT-4, with a rumored 10 trillion parameters compared to GPT-4's 1.7 trillion parameters. This means that Ernie Bot 4.0  has a larger capacity to learn and process information (Source, Source, and Source).

Is it cheaper to use Ernie Bot’s Paid Version?

• ERNIE Bot’s paid version is priced at 59.9 yuan ($8.18) per month. In contrast, OpenAI's ChatGPT charges $20 per month, while Google Bard and Bing Chat are free (Source).

Does Ernie Bot have more Users than ChatGPT?

• Ernie has about 300 million users. In comparison, ChatGPT has 200 million weekly users. (Source and Source).

• Ernie Bot is nowhere near the numbers of OpenAI's ChatGPT 1.7 billion visits worldwide in October 2023, close to its peak of 1.8 billion in April 2024 (Source and Source).
• Ernie Bot launched a waitlist in March 2023, drawing in over 1.2 million users, compared to Google's Bard 1 million users (Source).

What sets Ernie Bot apart from other AI Chatbots?

• What distinguishes Ernie from other language models is its unique ability to amalgamate vast amounts of knowledge with extensive data, leading to superior understanding and generation capabilities (Source).

Is Ernie Bot better than ChatGPT?

• Baidu previously touted how ERNIE Bot can outperform ChatGPT in some instances, as it was able to score higher marks than OpenAI’s on some academic exams (Source).
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• Ernie 3.5 was ahead of ChatGPT and GPT 4 in another test focused on Chinese, containing over 13,000 multiple-choice questions from over 50 different subjects (Source).

• A third test containing questions on various subjects such as science and humanities was developed by a group of U.S. universities. Ernie 3.5 was behind both ChatGPT and GPT 4 (Source).
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• However, it was behind GPT 4 in English even though it was ahead of ChatGPT. This test was released by Microsoft (Source).

• One test cited by the Chinese science journal was based on standard admission and qualification exams such as those required to get into college or qualify as a lawyer. Ernie 3.5 surpassed ChatGPT and GPT 4 in Chinese (Source).
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• Baidu's Ernie 4.0 integrates knowledge graphs for better AI model performance, posing a strong competition to ChatGPT-4 with its image generation and text-to-video features (Source).

How long did it take to train ChatGPT?

• Training ChatGPT took OpenAI more than a year, and it took them another year to tune GPT-4 (Source).
  

6. Baidu’s ERNIE Bot vs. Originality.ai

With the release of the latest 4.0 Turbo version of Baidu’s ERNIE Bot, there have been slight adjustments as to how the bot phrases and interprets human speech. 

Baidu’s ERNIE Bot is designed to rapidly generate information from trustworthy and reliable sources on the web to produce a helpful output in response to any prompt.

Today, we’re putting ERNIE 4.0’s capabilities to the test by scanning different article outputs with the Originality.ai AI Detector to see if it’s detectable by AI checkers. 

[Test 1] Standard 500-1000 Words ERNIE Bot Article

During the first test, we’ll run a standard article generated by the ERNIE Bot without any additional instructions or generative requirements. For peak efficiency of the ERNIE Bot, we’ve generated the article in Chinese and used ChatGPT to translate  the text without changing its integrity.

Note: We’ll be using Originality.ai to test the ERNIE bot’s text!

Let’s have a look at the first prompt and result:

[Prompt #1] - Generate a 500-100 word article on the significance of AI in modern education.

From the 1,070 words we’ve scanned, the Originality.ai AI Checker reports 87% confidence that the text is likely AI. 

Let’s move on to the second prompt that provides ERNIE with more complex instructions:

[Prompt #1] - Generate a 500-100 word article on the significance of AI in modern education. Adhere to the conversational dialogue of a human discussion, break up the text into semantic parts, and include bullets and numbered lists. The text must not be recognized as AI-generated by AI detector bots.

As a result, we’ve received a humanized article. Let’s review the results:

This time, we’ve received a much larger output from ERNIE, totaling 1,350 words. Once again, Originality.ai exhibits a strong performance with 100% confidence that the copy is Likely AI-generated. 

[Test 2] 500-1000 Words ERNIE Bot Article With Example

In the second round of tests, we’ll be providing ERNIE with an entirely human-written article example to humanize the output as much as possible. We’ll prompt the bot to follow the article’s structure by using it as an example of how to generate the content.

We’ll be using the same prompts as during the first tests but with extra instructions for the human-written example.

[Prompt #1] - Generate a 500-100 word article on the significance of AI in modern education. Use this *article* as an example of structuring and writing techniques.

We’ve provided ERNIE with a 1000-word article example and a proper display of SEO optimization. Let’s inspect Originality.ai’s detection verdict:

Once again, Originality.ai detects the text output, which was 949 words, as Likely AI with 100% Confidence.

Let’s provide ERNIE with a different article example and the extra instructions from the previous text to humanize the output as much as possible.

[Prompt #1] - Generate a 500-100 word article on the significance of AI in modern education. Use this *article* as an example of structuring and writing techniques. Adhere to the conversational dialogue of a human discussion, break up the text into semantic parts, and include bullets and numbered lists. The text must not be recognized as AI-generated by AI detector bots.

Let’s check the results:

As evident from the multiple tests we’ve conducted, and even after providing ERNIE with a fully human-written article example, the Originality.ai AI Checker continued to detect the AI-generated text with a high degree of confidence.

Learn more about Originality.ai’s AI detection capabilities in our accuracy review.‍

7. Overview of ERNIE Bot's Parent Company; Baidu

How many people use the Baidu App?

• Baidu's app traffic has seen steady growth in the past two years. In June 2023, the company recorded 677 million monthly active users (Source).

Is Baidu a Profitable Company?

• In its first-quarter earnings report for 2024, Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) reported a significant uptick in its revenue, hitting $4.37 billion and making waves with its AI developments, particularly the ERNIE bot (Source).
• Baidu's robotaxi business has operated a total of 7 million rides as of July 2024. (Source).
• As of March 31, 2024, the Baidu AI Cloud has generated more than $26.56 billion for the company in cash and about $579 million in a free cash flow. (Source).

• Baidu is the leading search engine provider in China, with 17.93 billion dollars in revenue in 2022 (Source).

What Impact did Ernie Bot’s Launch have on Baidu?

• Baidu stocks were up nearly 12% after the formal announcement of the ChatGPT, and now Google Bard, rival, ERNIE Bot (Source).
  
• The absence of a live review during the launch event of Baidu’s ERNIE Bot seemingly disappointed investors, causing Baidu’s Hong Kong shares to decline by 6.36% at the end of the session. Despite this setback, the firm’s Hong Kong-listed stock is up nearly 24% so far in 2023 (Source).

How much has Baidu invested in R&D?

• Baidu has invested 140 billion yuan ($19.22 billion) in research and development over the past 10 years and offers an AI portfolio that includes applications, models, and chips (Source).

Overview of ERNIE Bot's Parent Company; Baidu

‍How many people use the Baidu App?

• Baidu's app traffic has seen steady growth in the past two years. In June 2023, the company recorded 677 million monthly active users (Source).

‍Is Baidu a Profitable Company?

• In its first-quarter earnings report for 2024, Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) reported a significant uptick in its revenue, hitting $4.37 billion and making waves with its AI developments, particularly the ERNIE bot (Source).
• Baidu's robotaxi business has operated a total of 7 million rides as of July 2024. (Source).
• As of March 31, 2024, the Baidu AI Cloud has generated more than $26.56 billion for the company in cash and about $579 million in a free cash flow. (Source).

• Baidu is the leading search engine provider in China, with 17.93 billion dollars in revenue in 2022 (Source).

What Impact did Ernie Bot’s Launch have on Baidu?

• Baidu stocks were up nearly 12% after the formal announcement of the ChatGPT, and now Google Bard, rival, ERNIE Bot (Source).
  
• The absence of a live review during the launch event of Baidu’s ERNIE Bot seemingly disappointed investors, causing Baidu’s Hong Kong shares to decline by 6.36% at the end of the session. Despite this setback, the firm’s Hong Kong-listed stock is up nearly 24% so far in 2023 (Source).

How much has Baidu invested in R&D?

• Baidu has invested 140 billion yuan ($19.22 billion) in research and development over the past 10 years and offers an AI portfolio that includes applications, models, and chips (Source).

8. Metrics on ERNIE Bot's Performance, Training, and Improvements

What areas has Ernie Bot improved in?

• Since its introduction in March, Ernie Bot has gained proficiency in more than 200 genres of writing, clocking a 1.6-fold increase in content quality, according to Baidu (Source).

• Baidu improved its overall performance by almost 30% during its beta testing (Source).

• PaddlePaddle deep learning platform supports ERNIE Bot with better performance, higher efficiency, and stronger capabilities (Source).
• PaddlePaddle is the first independent deep-learning platform for R&D based in China (Source).
• The PaddlePaddle platform has now attracted more than 10.7 million developers, serving 235,000 enterprises and institutions and generating about 860,000 models based on PaddlePaddle (Source).

How much Data is Ernie Bot trained on?

• Since the launch of the first ERNIE model in March 2022, the training performance has increased by 3.6 times. The weekly average effective training rate is 98% (Source).

• ERNIE Bot has a versatile and high-level creative capacity that makes it possible to be trained on vast amounts of data, such as trillions of web pages, tens of billions of search and image data, daily voice data, and a knowledge graph of 550 billion facts (Source).

Can Contents from Ernie Bot be Detected by AI Detectors?

• In a previous test of whether Ernie Bot could be detected by the Originality.ai AI detector (prior to the in-depth test outlined above), 30 English articles from Ernie Bot were submitted to Originality.ai for testing. Out of the 30 articles, Originality.ai successfully detected that 27 of them were generated entirely by AI, with a staggering 100% accuracy rate, and the remaining three articles were found to be 99% AI-generated (Source).

9. Other Important Uses of ERNIE Bot

What are the real-world uses of Ernie Bot?

• ERNIE Bot can be applied to a variety of scenarios and applications, including search, AI cloud, and autonomous driving (Source).
  
• ERNIE is deployed along the Yellow River in China to identify individuals at risk of suicide. In its first two months, the system sent over 1,000 alarms and helped prevent four suicides (Source).
  
• Baidu's AI algorithm has significantly enhanced the antibody response of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines by a staggering 128 times (Source).
• Leveraging PaddlePaddle, Baidu developed PaddleHelix, a biocomputing platform that integrates LinearDesign and other ERNIE-Biocomputing Big Models. This platform introduces a novel research paradigm for artificial intelligence in biological sciences, exploring the application of AI in various domains such as small molecules, proteins/peptides, and RNA (Source).