![[1/5] Baidu's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Robin Li showcases artificial intelligence powered chatbot known as Ernie Bot by Baid](https://www.reuters.com/resizer/t9bhNwk776sIeIL_Q3rf1IS3CJs=/1200x628/smart/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/6MUILE4YRFICJEJYZD7NOOCOGM.jpg "China's answer to ChatGPT? Baidu shares tumble as Ernie Bot disappoints")
China's answer to ChatGPT? Baidu shares tumble as Ernie Bot disappoints
[1/5] Baidu's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Robin Li showcases artificial intelligence powered chatbot known as Ernie Bot by Baidu, during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Beijing, China March 16, 2023. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
BEIJING/HONG KONG, March 16 (Reuters) - China's Baidu unveiled its much-awaited artificial intelligence-powered chatbot known as Ernie Bot on Thursday, but disappointed investors with its use of pre-recorded videos and the lack of a public launch, sending its shares tumbling.
The just over an hour-long presentation, which came two days after Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google unveiled a flurry of AI tools for its email, collaboration and cloud software, gave the world a glimpse of what could be China's strongest rival to U.S. research lab OpenAI's ChatGPT.
But unlike ChatGPT, which last November launched as a free to use chatbot to the public, Baidu limited the presentation to brief videos that showed Ernie carrying out mathematical calculations, speaking in Chinese dialects and generating a video and image with text prompts.
