(Bloomberg) — ByteDance Ltd. has overtaken Baidu Inc. in the race to provide China’s answer to ChatGPT — at least in terms of popularity.
Bloomberg’s Most Read
Doubao, the AI-powered chatbot launched in August, surpassed Baidu’s Ernie Bot in downloads last year and now has more regular monthly users on iOS in China, according to data from Sensor Tower. Ernie had the fastest start in the country, but ByteDance has now taken the lead and other rivals are closing in.
Beijing-based ByteDance has prioritized catching up on AI, with co-founder and CEO Liang Rubo calling for a sense of urgency at the company that has built a global following with its short-video services, TikTok and Douyin. His Doubao was the most downloaded AI chatbot on Apple Inc.’s iOS, with nearly 9 million downloads in the year to April, followed by Ernie with 8 million, Sensor Tower data showed. Doubao also had the highest number of monthly active users, with over 4 million.
Although the research does not include Android mobile app stores, it illustrates the broader trend in the Chinese market. ByteDance revealed last week that Doubao now has 26 million monthly active users across mobile and PC. This compares to OpenAI’s ChatGPT mobile app, which has 6.7 million monthly users in the US, according to Similarweb.
Chinese tech pioneers from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Tencent Holdings Ltd. have joined Silicon Valley peers such as Microsoft Corp. in making big bets on generative AI. In addition to developing their own in-house core models, they are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in emerging companies like Baichuan and Zhipu AI.
Read more: What I discovered when testing China’s first AI chatbots
The nascent rush for AI services in China includes young startups like Beijing-based Moonshot AI with its Kimi bot, highlighting “the sector’s low barrier to entry,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts including Robert Lea wrote in a report. “Unbridled competition in China’s AI sector – which remains dominated by free-to-use services – combined with US trade restrictions on advanced AI accelerator chips will likely continue to hamper monetization efforts for everyone,” they said.
Ernie is alone among China’s top five AI chatbots to offer a paid subscription tier, although it has grossed less than $500,000 in in-app purchases and subscribers since its launch in March 2023, Sensor Tower found. The biggest driver of growth is expected to come from advertising and cloud services, through which Baidu says Ernie will contribute several billion yuan of additional revenue this year.
–With assistance from Zheping Huang.
Bloomberg Businessweek Most Read
©2024 Bloomberg LP
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25522359/wapo_climate_answers.png?w=300&resize=300,300&ssl=1 "The Washington Post created an AI chatbot for weather questions")
