On Monday, the technology business Baidu denied a newspaper article claiming that its AI chatbot, Ernie, had any connection to military research conducted in China.
The South China Morning Post, a daily published in Hong Kong, referenced a scholarly article from a university connected to the People’s Liberation Army’s cyberwarfare branch on Friday. The division tested its artificial intelligence system on two language-based AI chatbots that are similar to ChatGPT: Baidu’s Ernie and iFlyTek’s Spark, according to the study.
Baidu refuted the claims in a statement following its Hong Kong-listed stock’s more than 11.5% decline on Monday. It said that it had not entered into a commercial partnership with the authors of the paper or any of their connected organizations.
“The general public can access and utilize Ernie Bot,” the Chinese company stated in a statement.
The PLA Information Engineering University academic article described how Ernie Bot was trained to create simulated military reaction plans for Libyan forces in the event of an American military strike.
According to Baidu, the writers would have exploited the features accessible to any user dealing with such AI tools if they had used huge language models like Ernie Bot.
Similar to ChatGPT, users can ask Ernie Bot questions or make requests, and the bot will respond with content based on the user’s initial input. Ernie Bot is not allowed to respond to inquiries that the Chinese government deems politically sensitive or forbidden, much like many other online services in the country.
At first, a “physical link” was mentioned in the South China Morning Post article about Ernie and the PLA division. Since then, the reference has been updated to reflect that the PLA lab used Baidu’s AI model to test their system.
The sharp decline in Baidu’s stock price highlighted investor concerns that Chinese technology companies associated with the Chinese government or military would face sanctions from the United States, akin to what happened to China’s largest telecom company, Huawei, which the United States views as a potential source of espionage.
Disagreements about trade, technology, and Taiwan—a self-governing island and ally of the United States—have caused a deterioration in relations between China and the United States in recent years. China views Taiwan as a province that should be subjugated by force if necessary.
In August 2023, the public was able to access Ernie Bot as part of a competition among Chinese technology companies to create an equivalent of ChatGPT for the country. Baidu, the operator of the most popular search engine in China, is also one of the top artificial intelligence companies in the nation.
The Beijing-based company reported in December that Ernie Bot had over 100 million users.
