News / China

China's Baidu sues US tech firm Apple over fake bot application

Saturday, 08 April 2023 11:12 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 08 April 2023 11:16 AM ]

Men interact with a Baidu AI robot near the company logo at its headquarters in Beijing, China April 23, 2021. (Photo by Reuters)

The Chinese search engine giant Baidu has filed lawsuits against YS app developers and Apple Incorporation over fake copies available on Apple's app store of its artificial intelligence app, called Ernie bot.

Filed at the Beijing Haidian People's Court, the lawsuit is named against "relevant" app developers behind the counterfeiting apps of its AI chatbot and the Apple Company.

Baidu said in its statement that the apps claiming to be versions of the Ernie bot over the Apple App Store are counterfeit copies of its platform.

"At present, Ernie does not have any official app," Baidu said in a statement posted on its official "Baidu AI" WeChat account.

"Until our company's official announcement, any Ernie app you see from App Store or other stores are fake," it said.

For now, the Chinese chatbot is only available to users who apply for and receive access codes.

As of April 8, there were at least four apps listed on Apple’s App Store bearing the name of Ernie bot, according to research conducted by Reuters.

So far, Apple has not responded to a request for comment and to the claims of Baidu.

Also known as China’s ChatGPT, the AI-powered machine learning engine was launched last month and is being labeled as China’s closest answer to the US-developed ChatGPT chatbot.

Launched on March 16 by Baidu CEO Robin Li, at an event where he did a live stream presentation, the company’s shares immediately went down by around 10 percent as Li demonstrated the bot in front of the public, but later on rebounded.

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