Chinese tech heavyweight Baidu Inc announced on Tuesday that it will complete internal testing of its AI chatbot service called "Ernie Bot", similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, in March.

The Beijing-based company has invested large sums of money in developing its Ernie system, a large-scale machine-learning model that has been trained on massive data over several years and possesses in-depth semantic comprehension and generation capabilities.

The company's shares surged 13 percent after affirming it is on track to publicly roll out its ChatGPT-like chatbot.

Baidu has been engaged in the artificial intelligence sector for more than ten years, and accumulated strengths in technology covering deep learning algorithms and framework, AI-powered chips, and language training model.

In January, the company introduced its latest AI-generated content technologies, which feature versatile content creation skills and allow creators to play the role of screenwriters, illustrators, and editors or animators, greatly bolstering the development of AIGC.

fanfeifei@chinadaily.com.cn