AI Photo: VCG

Baidu. a leading Chinese AI company with strong Internet foundation, Tuesday unveiled ERNIE 4.0, a major upgrade that enhances the core abilities of understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory in its AI generative bot.

The announcement came at its annual flagship technology conference which Baidu World 2023 held in Beijing, marking the conference's return to an offline format after four years. 

"ERNIE 4.0 has achieved a full upgrade with drastically improved performance in understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory," Robin Li, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Baidu, said at the event. "These four core capabilities form the foundation of AI-native applications and have now unleashed unlimited opportunities for new innovations." 

In his keynote, Li showcased the new ERNIE Bot powered by ERNIE 4.0 through extensive demonstrations of its four core AI capabilities. 

ERNIE Bot is able to "Understand" and provide answers to complex and even disorganized human requests, as well as interpreting hidden messages. ERNIE can also "Generate" a range of content options, including text, images, and videos, in just a few minutes, based on one simple text prompt and image input. 

Li demonstrated ERNIE Bot's ability to "Reason" by having it solve complex geometry problems. Lastly, ERNIE Bot's ability to "Memorize" and integrate incremental inputs was demonstrated by writing a short story and regularly adding new information as ERNIE was in process of writing the story. 

ERNIE 4.0 started beta version testing in September based on a limited amount of user input, and has since seen its overall performance improved by almost 30 percent, according to the company. 

Baidu World 2023 also demonstrated Baidu's recent major strategic progress across multiple business sectors. In his keynote speech at the event, Jackson He, Senior Corporate Vice President of Baidu and General Manager of the Mobile Ecosystem Group, outlined a future where Baidu's mobile ecosystem, linking billions of users and millions of ecosystem partners, will stand at the cutting-edge of developing and introducing AI-native applications. 

Baidu possesses the world's largest autonomous driving ride service platform, Apollo Go, with cumulative rides provided to the public reaching more than four million. 

Apollo Go's fully driverless robotaxi fleet, operating without any driver or safety operator in the car, currently serves major cities in China, including Beijing, Wuhan, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Baidu anticipates a future where lower-cost robotaxi services will be more accessible to the public, bringing the industry closer to profitability.

Global Times