Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant, has filed lawsuits against Apple and app developers over fake copies of its AI-powered chatbot, Ernie.

Baidu claims that the counterfeit Ernie apps available on Apple’s App Store violate its intellectual property rights. The company has taken legal action by initiating lawsuits in Beijing Haidian People’s Court against both the developers of the counterfeit Ernie bot apps and Apple for distributing the fraudulent app.

The company warned users not to purchase access codes to the app until it makes an official announcement, as any Ernie app on the App Store or other stores is fake.

The recently released Ernie chatbot is a direct competitor to OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT built by OpenAI. Baidu claims that it has natural language processing capabilities, such as conversational chat and online live answering questions, writing articles, writing codes, and more.