China’s search engine operator Baidu said Tuesday the number of users of its AI-driven ERNIE Bot has doubled to over 200 million in four months, declaring itself a leader in artificial intelligence, as competitors rush into the sector. The company also added that ERNIE now handles 200 million daily queries.

Why it matters: Baidu’s chatbot has revived confidence in the company’s monetization of AI, with its 200 million users offering new potential avenues for growth. 

Details: Co-founder and CEO of Baidu Robin Li expressed confidence that natural language will emerge as the new programming language in the future in his speech titled “Everyone is a Developer” at the company’s AI Create conference on Tuesday.

• Baidu released three AI development tools during the event – AgentBuilder, AppBuilder, and ModelBuilder, underpinning Li’s view that developing apps should become “as straightforward as making a short video.” According to video demos showcased during the talk, these tools can even help users without any coding skills build apps.
• More than 190,000 AI apps were created through Baidu’s Qianfan cloud platform by over 85,000 businesses, the company claimed in the latest figure.
• In the speech, Li explained the “fine-tuning and post-pre-train methods” based on ERNIE 4.0, the firm’s current most advanced foundation model, enable the creation of models with better results at a lower cost compared to models tuned directly from open source models, which is why Li said he thought open-source models would become “more and more outdated.” His earlier comment that open source models “make little sense,”  recently sparked contention on social media among Baidu’s counterparts. 
• Rival Alibaba developed an open source large language model last August, becoming the first Chinese tech major to do so. Others, including startup 01.AI, founded by Kai-Fu Lee and Baichuan built by Sogou’s founder, both chose to make their billion-parameter models open source soon after.

Context: China’s regulator approved 117 large language models for generative AI services on March 25, according to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The scope of approvals signals stiff competition among tech companies scrambling to create potential from the technology’s commercial application.

• A recent chart finds Baidu, which was amongst the first batch to open its ChatGPT-like bot to the market last August, is being chased by rival company Moonshot AI-trained Kimi, which specializes in analyzing long text, in terms of total traffic. ERNIE Bot recorded 14.9 million clicks in March, while Kimi’s combined traffic surged by 321.58% to 12.6 million.