BEIJING – Chinese search engine giant Baidu on Monday cancelled a planned live-streamed product launch related to its ChatGPT-like “Ernie bot” that it had advertised as being open to the media and the public.

The webcast, scheduled for Monday afternoon, was switched to a closed-door meeting with the first batch of companies that are testing the product, Baidu said in a statement on Monday morning.

The change in format was to satisfy the “strong demand” from 120,000 companies that had applied to test the bot, the company said, adding that this would be the first of many closed-door meetings.

Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares fell as much as 4.5 per cent on Monday morning on initial reports of the cancellation.

Ernie bot, China’s closest answer so far to the US-developed ChatGPT, was launched on March 16 by Baidu chief executive Robin Li, who gave a live-streamed presentation that walked journalists through a series of prerecorded demonstrations of the Chinese chatbot’s various capabilities.

The company’s share price dropped while the presentation was being live-streamed, but rebounded the following day, owing in part to strong demand from the Chinese corporate sector for generative artificial intelligence, the technology powering products like Ernie bot and ChatGPT. REUTERS