China's ChatGPT rival, Ernie Bot surpasses 200 million users

Ernie Bot, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Chinese tech giant Baidu is now boasting over 200 million users, doubling the numbers reported just four months ago.

The company’s CEO Robin Li also says Ernie Bot’s API now handles 200 million daily queries, and has quickly gained traction among businesses, boasting over 85,000 enterprise clients.

Officially launched to the public last August, the chatbot's tremendous growth positions Baidu as a leader in the domestic AI market, particularly as competition intensifies.

Recent data from AIcpb.com revealed that Ernie Bot received a total of 14.9 million visits across its app and website last month, highlighting its popularity among users seeking AI-driven interactions.

But while Baidu's Ernie Bot currently maintains its lead, domestic competitors like Kimi, a chatbot developed by Moonshot AI, an Alibaba-backed startup are swiftly gaining ground. It registered 12.6 million visits in the same month, per an AIcpb.com report.

Western counterparts like OpenAI's ChatGPT remain ahead in terms of global popularity. Data from AIcpb.com shows OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the world’s most popular generative AI service, with total traffic growing 9% to reach 1.86 billion views in March 2024.

Meanwhile, China has begun accelerated approvals for AI services in recent months, to compete with the U.S. Last week, state media reported 117 large language models have received approvals from the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), as the race for AI dominance heats up.