Baidu’s Ernie Bot generative AI service received 33 million questions on its public debut, including some it had trouble with

Baidu’s ChatGPT-like service Ernie Bot saw rapid adoption on the first day of its public roll-out, with the mobile app topping downloads on multiple sites, including Apple’s China iOS store, as millions of users tested the service with a wide range of questions, including some that it had trouble answering.

The Chinese government has lifted its tight lid on the country’s aspirational ChatGPT-wannabes, approving the first batch of generative artificial intelligence (AI) services for public release on the last day in August, two weeks after it enacted sweeping regulations on the technology.

The approved services include Ernie Bot, as well as those from AI specialist SenseTime, Sogou founder Wang Xiaochuan’s new venture Baichuan and state-backed Zhipu AI, among others.

Baidu’s AI bot was the most popular app on Apple’s Chinese iOS store on Thursday, with 313,610 downloads, according to Beijing-based app intelligence service Qimai.cn.

It also topped half of the eight mainstream local Android app stores Qimai tracked, totalling 2.4 million downloads on the first day of launch, thanks to local users keen to get their hands on generative AI services.

These early adopters peppered Ernie with more than 33.42 million questions in the first 24 hours after its public debut, according to a post published to the company’s Weibo account. However, the AI bot was not able to respond to some queries, and in other cases did not necessarily provide fair answers, according to online screenshots of dialogues with the chatbot and the Post’s tests.