Chinese search giant Baidu Inc. today unveiled an upgraded version of its artificial intelligence model named Ernie 4.0 Turbo and stated that the generative AI chatbot has reached 300 million users to date.

The company released the model to maintain its position in the competitive Chinese AI market as a significant upgrade to the Ernie 4.0 model the company launched in October. The model is based on an internally developed large language model called ERNIE, or Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration.

The chatbot’s mobile version reportedly exceeded 1 million users within a day of the release, 100 million customers by the end of 2023, and now 300 million users since its launch, the company’s Chief Technology Officer Wang Haifeng said at a corporate event, according to Reuters.

The company said Ernie 4.0 Turbo offers significantly increased capabilities over Ernie 4, with faster responses and boosted reasoning capabilities. Wang added that it will soon be available via the web and app for consumers as well as via application programming interface for developers.

In addition to unveiling the upgraded AI model, Baidu launched PaddlePaddle 3.0, the company’s AI deep learning framework. The new platform provides technologies for developers including parallel processing, compiler optimization, cross-hardware compatibility for ultra-large-scale models, and integration for training and inference capabilities.

Baidu said the framework now supports more than 14 million developers and 370,000 businesses and institutions. The company added it has also hosted the creation of 950,000 AI models.

The news comes shortly after OpenAI announced this week that it plans to block access to its API from mainland China. Although ChatGPT is unavailable in China, developers can still access its API from within China. However, the firm sent out warning letters Tuesday that this access will be cut off from unsupported regions starting July 9.

“We are taking additional steps to block API traffic from regions where we do not support access to OpenAI’s services,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters.

This restriction will make domestic generative AI products, including Baidu’s Ernie AI ecosystem, more critical to local developers for their products. In response to OpenAI’s announcement, Baidu, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., and several other Chinese tech firms developing AI models have launched campaigns to attract developers.

Baidu’s cloud company announced that users of OpenAI’s services will receive extra tokens for the Ernie 3.5 model based on their usage of the OpenAI API to help them migrate.

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