Baidu ERNIE Bot Publicly Launches — China's First Major LLM

Baidu opens ERNIE Bot (文心一言, Wenxin Yiyan) to the Chinese public, becoming the first major Chinese language model available at scale after months of closed testing. ERNIE Bot's underwhelming live demo caused Baidu's stock to drop 10%, but subsequent updates showed dramatic improvements. Baidu reports ERNIE Bot passes China's national college entrance exam (Gaokao) and medical licensing exams by mid-2023.