Baidu unveils an updated AI model Ernie 4.0 Turbo as Bot’s users reach 300m

Chinese search engine giant Baidu has unveiled the latest upgraded version of its AI model, Ernie 4.0 Turbo, as the company consolidates its market share in the Chinese AI space. Chief technology officer Haifeng Wang on Friday announced the development at the group’s deep learning developer conference Wave Summit in Beijing.

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This follows the release of the Ernie 4 model in September last year, which Baidu said rivaled OpenAI’s GPT-4 capabilities. Tech firms have been jostling for supremacy in the AI sector, teasing the market with new products and services to remain ahead of the competition.

The upgraded version offers a superior performance

At the Wave Summit, Wang also spoke about the Application Programming Interface (API) used by Ernie Bot, as well as the deep learning framework PaddlePaddle 3.0. Meanwhile, Wang said Ernie Bot has to date now reached 300 million users.

The company in April revealed Ernie Bot had 200 million users while the Ernie API handled queries amounting to 200 million daily. Currently, Ernie API now handles 500 million daily queries.

According to the company, the upgraded Ernie 4.0 Turbo offers a superior performance providing faster responses and “boosting capabilities of its Ernie 4.0 foundation.”

Users can access the tool via mobile applications and the web, according to a Reuters report.

At the #Baidu WAVE SUMMIT Deep Learning Developer Conference, Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng announced that the company's generative artificial intelligence (#AI) product ERNIE Bot (also known as Wenxin Yiyan) has accumulated 300 million users. pic.twitter.com/Mc9BKTAvSs

— Amy Song (@AmySong199946) June 28, 2024

Baidu also launched other products

The Chinese firm also announced release of its upgraded learning platform, PaddlePaddle AI ecosystem, which according to Baidu now supports 14.65 million developers. Baidu also revealed it has to date served 370,000 enterprises and institutions and has hosted the creation of 950,000 million models.

According to Neowin, the upgraded platform now integrates core technologies “including an auto-parallel architecture which unifies dynamic and static graphs, multi-hardware compatibility for large models, and integration of training and inference capabilities.”

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Baidu emphasized that these features boost performance and deliver more optimal outcomes for large models.

During the same event, Baidu also released a collection of other AI products for the agriculture industry like the Farmers-Academician AI agent, which is a collaboration between Baidu and Professor Zhu Youyong, of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The agriculture-focused tool is meant to provide tailored solutions for agricultural production.

Cryptopolitan reporting by Enacy Mapakame