- ERNIE Bot is a new-generation large language model (LLM)
and generative AI product developed by Baidu.
- The AI product showcases proficiency in five generative
use cases: literary creation, business writing, mathematical
calculation, Chinese language understanding, and multi-modal
generation.
- Starting March 16, 2023,
ERNIE Bot will be accessible to invited users, and the API will be
available upon application to enterprise clients via Baidu AI
Cloud.
- In the first two hours following the press conference,
more than 30,000 enterprise users have applied for access to the
API of ERNIE Bot Enterprise Edition.
BEIJING, March 16,
2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU and
HKEX: 9888) ("Baidu" or the "Company"), a leading AI company with
strong internet foundation, today introduced ERNIE Bot, a
new-generation large language model (LLM) and generative AI
product. ERNIE Bot excels in a range of areas, including
understanding Chinese language and culture, generating literary and
business writing, performing complex mathematical calculations, and
producing multi-modal content. The AI product can comprehend human
intentions and deliver accurate, logical, and fluent responses
approaching human level.
Starting March 16, 2023, ERNIE Bot
will be open to an initial group of users with invitation codes and
will soon be made available to more users. Baidu is also offering
access to the ERNIE Bot API via Baidu AI Cloud, allowing enterprise
clients to apply for and harness the platform's advanced language
capabilities. Since February, over 650 enterprises have joined the
ecosystem of ERNIE Bot.
Large language models and generative AI represent a new
technological paradigm, presenting an opportunity that no global
enterprise can afford to miss. ERNIE Bot is positioned as a
foundational AI empowering platform, designed to facilitate
intelligent transformations across various industries such as
finance, energy, media, and public affairs. Robin Li, Baidu Co-founder, Chairman and CEO
said: "Baidu envisions a future where we join forces with all to
drive the evolution of AI, empowering every individual with access
to state-of-the-art productivity tools and ensuring that the
benefits of these advancements are shared by all."
Try ERNIE Bot at:
https://yiyan.baidu.com/
Apply for ERNIE Bot API at:
https://cloud.baidu.com/survey_summit/wenxin.html?track=C109067&track=4016a6e2daa72dd8f416b6eba17830b31f1db02567e779da
Watch the full recording of the press conference at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvEUI3x0vI
You can access ERNIE Bot's multimedia assets at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1j2W3nxluD5HCRLMNHXLk61oF4MRxNYnH
Transforming productivity tools
At the press conference unveiling ERNIE Bot in Beijing, Robin
Li showcased its performance in five scenarios: literary
creation, business writing, mathematical calculation, Chinese
language understanding, and multi-modal generation.
- Literary creation: ERNIE Bot summarized the
essential content of the popular Chinese science fiction novel,
The Three-Body Problem. It proposed five angles for
potential expansion of the story based on dialogue queries,
demonstrating its well-rounded expertise in dialogue, analysis and
content generation, as well as its factuality and reasoning
bolstered by inherent knowledge graphs.
- Business writing: Able to serve as a versatile
business copywriter, ERNIE Bot demonstrated its ability to
construct a brand from scratch, encompassing tasks such as devising
a name for a company, crafting an engaging brand slogan, and
drafting press releases. This high-level creative capacity is
possible because ERNIE Bot is trained on trillions of web pages,
tens of billions of search and image data, hundreds of billions of
daily voice data, and a knowledge graph of 550 billion facts.
- Mathematical calculation: ERNIE Bot also possesses a
level of cognitive ability, enabling it to master relatively
complex tasks such as mathematical derivation and logical
reasoning. When faced with classic puzzles like the "chicken and
rabbit in the same cage" problem, which tests human logical
thinking, ERNIE Bot can understand the meaning of the question,
develop a correct problem-solving approach, and follow the proper
steps to come up with the correct answer.
- Chinese language understanding: ERNIE Bot demonstrates
unparalleled natural language processing (NLP) capabilities in
Chinese, which is reflected in its understanding of the Chinese
language and cultural nuances. In a demo, ERNIE Bot explained the
meaning behind the idiom "Paper is expensive in Luoyang", which
alludes to the high demand for paper due to the popularity of
poetry. ERNIE Bot expounded on the economic theory underpinning the
idiom - the law of supply and demand - and created a poem
incorporating the four Chinese characters of the idiom as the first
word of each line.
- Multi-modal generation: ERNIE Bot can produce text,
images, audio and video given a text prompt, and is even capable of
delivering voice in several local dialects such as the Sichuan dialect. The video generation features
of ERNIE Bot is not yet available to all users due to its
relatively high cost.
"Multi-modality is an undeniably future trend for generative
AI," said Robin Li. "In the future,
as we continue to refine Baidu's unified multi-modal large model,
ERNIE Bot's multi-modal generation capabilities will
advance."
Despite the capabilities of ERNIE Bot, LLM of this type are
still far from perfect. Continuous improvement based on real-world
user feedback remains essential.
"As soon as we put ERNIE Bot into use," Li remarked, "we will
establish a mechanism where real-world user feedback, developer
calls, and model iterations work in synergy to enhance the model
more effectively and efficiently."
Technology foundations of ERNIE Bot
ERNIE Bot is a culmination of years of research and industry
practices by Baidu, said Haifeng
Wang, CTO of Baidu. This new-generation, knowledge-enhanced
LLM is built upon Baidu's in-house models ERNIE (Enhanced
Representation of Knowledge Integration) and PLATO (Pre-trained
Dialogue Generation Model). Since its release in 2019, ERNIE has
evolved from a natural language understanding model into a model
platform with cross-language, cross-modal, cross-industry and
cross-task capabilities.
Baidu trained ERNIE Bot using Supervised Fine-Tuning,
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback, Prompt Learning,
Knowledge Enhancement, Retrieval Augmentation, and Dialogue
Augmentation.
Robin Li, speaking at the press
conference, emphasized Baidu's unique position as one of the few
companies worldwide offering a full AI stack. This includes AI chip
Kunlun, deep learning framework PaddlePaddle, pre-trained model
ERNIE, and a variety of applications such as search, AI cloud,
autonomous driving, and Xiaodu smart devices.
Li highlighted that the advantage of Baidu's full AI-stack lies
in its ability to achieve end-to-end optimization, substantially
boosting efficiency. The synergy between framework and model
lowers costs and streamlines model development. Baidu's
PaddlePaddle framework has been employed in developing 4D hybrid
parallel technology, which greatly enhances the efficiency of
training and inference for mega-scale models. Baidu's full AI-stack
will facilitate a closed-loop system where each layer can offer
feedback, helping ERNIE Bot to continue iterating and
improving.
Emerging business opportunities
Li predicted that LLMs will pave the way for three emerging
business opportunities: cloud computing firms offering
Model-as-a-Service solutions, companies focusing on fine-tuning
sector-specific models, and enterprises creating applications built
upon LLMs.
Baidu AI Cloud will soon launch cloud services and application
products based on ERNIE Bot, including public cloud and privatized
deployment, said Li.
"ERNIE Bot is not a tool for
China-US Technology confrontation. It is a product of
generations of Baidu technicians pursuing the dream of technology
changing the world. It is a brand-new platform allowing us to serve
hundreds of millions of users and empower thousands of industries,
and a powerful example of innovation-driven development," said
Robin Li at the conference.
"We believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will
revolutionize every industry we know today. The immense
long-term value of AI and its transformative impact on all aspects
of life are only in their infancy. The future holds numerous
groundbreaking applications and products, as well as many more
milestone events."
About Baidu
Founded in 2000, Baidu's mission is to make the complicated
world simpler through technology. Baidu is a leading AI company
with strong Internet foundation, trading on the NASDAQ under "BIDU"
and HKEX under "9888." One Baidu ADS represents eight Class A
ordinary shares.
Media Contact: Intlcomm@baidu.com
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SOURCE Baidu, Inc.