Chinese search engine giant Baidu on Monday canceled a planned live product launch related to its ChatGPT-like “Ernie bot” that it advertised as open to media and the public.
The webcast, scheduled for Monday afternoon, was switched to a closed-door meeting with the first group of companies testing the product, Baidu said in a statement Monday morning.
The reason for the format change was to meet “strong demand” from the 120,000 companies that asked to test Ernie’s bot, the company said, adding that it would be the first of many closed-door sessions.
Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares fell as much as 4.5 percent on Monday morning after the initial news of the cancellation.
Ernie bot, the closest Chinese answer to the US-developed ChatGPT so far, was launched on March 16 by Baidu CEO Robin Li, who gave a live-streamed presentation that took journalists through a series of pre-recorded demos showing the various capabilities of the Chinese chatbot.
The company’s share price fell while the presentation was still live, but bounced back the next day, in part due to strong demand from China’s corporate sector for generative artificial intelligence (AI), the technology powering products like the Ernie bot and ChatGPT.
