Artificial Intelligence Photo: VCG

Chinese internet giant Baidu's artificial intelligence (AI)-generated language model ERNIE Bot is now fully open to the general public starting Thursday. In addition, other tech giants including Tencent, Huawei and iFlytek also reportedly have obtained approval to offer access to the general public.

In addition to ERNIE Bot, Baidu is set to launch a suite of new AI-native apps that allow users to fully experience the four core abilities of generative AI, namely understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory, the company said in a statement sent to the Global Times.

ERNIE Bot builds upon Baidu's ERNIE foundation model, which has consistently ranked first in over 10 authoritative evaluations both domestically and internationally.

Launched in mid-March, ERNIE Bot is one of the first Chinese ChatGPT rivals, with Chinese tech firms including Alibaba, ByteDance and iFlytek having also released their own models.

A total of 11 AI-generated language models in China have be granted approval, and will be available to the general public, domestic news site bjnews.com reported.