u is working on an AI chatbot service for search.

First Microsoft Bing. Then Google. Now Baidu is said to be bringing ChatGPT-style AI into its search results.

Why we care. Search engines from all major companies are vying to add chat features to search. It could have huge implications for search engines once they add chat features to search. Publishers may see their traffic and visibility drop depending on how the AI chat is deployed within search results. Searchers could also be affected (will the information be reliable and accurate?). Search marketers need to be aware of all developments as there are many unknowns.

First, a standalone app. Then search. Baidu will launch its AI chatbot as a standalone application (similar to ChatGPT). According to reports, it would then be merged into Baidu search in stages by March.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Baidu will use its deep learning model called ERNIE (which Baidu described “a pre-training language model with 265 billion parameters”) as the foundation for the chatbot and “training it on both Chinese and English-language sources within and outside China’s firewall.” Baidu will also limit the outputs of their chatbot in order to comply with China’scensorship rules.

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The first Search Engine Land article was Baidu working to create an AI chatbot service.