Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, has unveiled its answer to ChatGPT – the AI chatbot Ernie Bot. However, it seems like investors were less than impressed when Baidu CEO Robin Li presented a prerecorded video of the chatbot, causing shares to plummet by 10%.

Even so, Li said that the chatbot had been the subject of high demand, and 650 companies have already signed up to use it for various applications, including searches, AI cloud, autonomous driving, and smart devices.

During the demonstration, Ernie Bot showed off its skills by answering questions about a popular Chinese science-fiction novel, ‘The Three-Body Problem’, and created images based on prompts. This launch comes after Baidu shifted its focus to AI in recent years, spending $3.4 billion on research and development in 2022.