AI Race: Google and Baidu Announce Chatbots After ChatGPT's Success

The AI race is on: after the success of Microsoft-funded OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google announced its “Bard” AI chatbot on Monday, and Chinese tech giant Baidu said Tuesday that it would finish internal testing for its “Ernie bot” in March. 

Key Quotes: Google CEO Sundar Pichai said Monday that the tech giant was opening Bard up “to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.” Baidu’s Ernie bot (“Wenxin Yiyan” or “文心一言” in Chinese) is “capable of handling a wide range of tasks, such as language understanding, language generation, and text-to-image generation,” the company said. 

For Context: AI is expected to shake up many industries, including education, science, and journalism. Microsoft, which has invested billions into OpenAI, plans to integrate ChatGPT’s technology into its Bing search engine. Google also plans to integrate AI language models into its products, including its search engine. As a Chinese company, Baidu’s involvement in the race for conversational AI could factor into heightened competition between the U.S. and China.

How the Media Covered It: Headlines across the media sensationalized the story by announcing the start of an “AI War,” an “AI Battle,” or an “AI chatbot frenzy.” Coverage was most common among business and tech outlets, which generally tend to lean center or left. Coverage was also common among right-rated outlets, but it often came as wire service from outlets like Reuters (Center).