In 2019, Chinese search engine company Baidu introduced ‘Ernie’. Its language-learning model, derived from ‘Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration’, can perform tasks such as language understanding, language generating, and text-to-image generation.
As artificial intelligence continues to sweep through the industry, the company is first looking to change how people interact with search engines by introducing Ernie Bot into its services ecosystem. Microsoft did something similar with its Bing service. But instead of just stopping at search engines, Baidu is also branching into the automotive sector.
The company is working with Jidu Auto, the electric vehicle portion of Baidu, to bring AI into its cars. A separate operating system for smart vehicles called Apollo Smart Cabin is currently used in its cars. However, this new integration seeks to make conversations between drivers and their vehicles even more natural and intuitive.
The new model will act as a thoughtful and cooperative assistant, fulfilling a driver’s needs while on the road. Unfortunately, though, its exact job scope is not known as of now.