Chip war and censorship hobble Chinese tech giants in chatbot race

Beijing (AFP) March 22, 2023

Search giant Baidu's lacklustre unveiling of its chatbot exposed gaps in China's race to rival ChatGPT, as censorship and a US squeeze on chip imports have hamstrung the country's artificial intelligence ambitions. The highly anticipated preview of "Ernie Bot" last week was limited to a pre-recorded demonstration with simple questions to summarise the plot of a sci-fi novel and solving a str