China has no intention of getting caught up in the race for artificial intelligence. And especially not Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google. The giant has decided to sue both Apple and the developers who installed fake applications from its Ernie Bot chatbot, presented a few weeks ago, on the AppStore.
Baidu thus indicated in a press release, consulted by the Reuters agency, that it had seized the Beijing Haidian People’s Court to prosecute the creators of the infringing applications, as well as Apple. “At this time, Ernie does not have an official app,” Baidu said in a statement posted late Friday on its official WeChat account.
A bumpy start
This legal episode only adds to Baidu’s rocky start in the world of artificial intelligence. Unveiled in mid-March at a much-anticipated conference, “Ernie bot” was intended to compete with ChatGPT, the booming conversational artificial intelligence.
But since the demos were not held live, Ernie’s presentation flopped and led to Baidu’s 10% plunge on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a $3 billion loss in stock market valuation. At the moment, Ernie Bot is only available upon registration on a waiting list and only in Mandarin.
Source: BFM TV
