"Rising Like ChatGPT" Baidu Stock Plummets After Purchase, Investors in Tears

Companies Whose Stock Prices Fell After AI Chatbot Launch

Since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, several big tech companies have been competing in the 'AI chatbot' arena, but gaining the trust of consumers and investors does not seem easy. Instead, more companies are experiencing a sharp decline in their stock prices after product launches.

Baidu's Stock Price Plummets 10% Intraday at AI Launch Event

Chinese Baidu founder Li Yanhong explaining the features of the company's chatbot 'Ernie Bot' in Beijing on the 16th (local time). [Image source=Yonhap News]

China's largest portal site Baidu live-streamed the launch event of Ernie Bot (Chinese name: Yuanshiniyan) on YouTube and other platforms on the 16th (local time). It is a chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT but differentiated by its specialization in the Chinese language.

During the demonstration, Ernie Bot composed poetry, answered the presenter's questions, and showed capabilities to create not only text but also images and videos. It also analyzed the content of China's famous sci-fi novel series 'The Three-Body Problem.'

However, the market response was somewhat lackluster. After the Ernie Bot launch, Baidu's stock price plunged 10%, ultimately closing the day down 6.44% compared to the previous day. Critics pointed out that Baidu did not specifically explain the differences between Ernie Bot and ChatGPT, nor did it address how to resolve the 'content censorship issue' that affects AI chatbot performance.

Google's 'Bard' Also Delivered Incorrect Answers at Launch Event

Baidu was not the only one to face embarrassment at an event showcasing its AI technology. The US internet company Google also held a launch event for its ChatGPT rival 'Bard' on the 8th of last month, but its stock price plummeted instead.

At the event, Bard gave incorrect answers. Regarding NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, Bard stated it was "the first telescope used to photograph planets outside the solar system," which turned out to be false. On that day, Alphabet, Google's parent company, saw its stock price on the New York Stock Exchange drop 7% compared to the previous day.

Criticism from academia is growing that this AI chatbot technology is still immature for full commercialization. Noam Chomsky, a distinguished linguist and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recently wrote in an article for The New York Times that "chatbots may be useful for coding, but they may never be able to engage in original, deep, and potentially controversial discussions," and assessed that "AI capable of equaling or surpassing human intelligence is still far off."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.