Image source: China Visual

BEIJING, February 15 (TMTPOST) — Chinese smart electric vehicle company Jidu Auto will apply Baidu’s ChatGPT-style products in its cars, marking the first time for such artificial intelligence technologies to be used in cars, Jidu’s chief executive officer announced on Tuesday.

Jidu Auto, a joint venture between Chinese automaker Geely and tech giant Baidu, also promised that the first batch of electric cars equipped with the chatbot would be delivered by the end of this year.

Last week, Baidu said that it would launch ERNIE bot next month, two months after Microsoft-backed OpenAI ChatGPT became available to the public.

“It has reached a breaking point, where there has been enough accumulation of technology, data and computing power. AI technology has further matured and can be applied in many fields, greatly improving efficiency and changing people's production and lifestyle,” Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive officer, has argued recently.

As ChatGPT is an interactive chatbot that can provide more personalized and conversational results, there have been heated discussions about whether it will replace search engines, which passively provide article links. Baidu, the tech giant with the majority of China’s search engine market, has been investing in research and development to “let machine intelligence reach the level of human intelligence.”

“Search is essentially solving the problem that artificial intelligence will eventually solve, that is, the machine must truly understand people's intentions and be able to respond accordingly. In the future, search engines will understand people's intentions more and more accurately, and people's various needs can also be better expressed,” Li said.

Jidu opened its first physical store in Beijing on Tuesday, offering users a place to experience smart driving. Last December, Jidu Auto planned to start mass production of its electric cars in 2023, after releasing a virtual model of its first concept robocar in June.

The Shanghai-based automaker was founded in March 2021, with respective stakes of 55 percent and 45 percent from Baidu and Geely. It raised nearly $400 million in Series A financing last year.