Companies that fall foul of the new rules, likely to come into effect sometime this year, could have their services suspended, face fines or even face a criminal investigation

"Until our company's official announcement, any Ernie app you see from App Store or other stores are fake," the Chinese search engine giant said in a statement

Users would become more dependent on the Baidu search engine once it is embedded with the AI-powered chatbot, company CEO Robin Li told reporters

Baidu also said earlier this week it will soon finish internal testing for a ChatGPT alternative called 'Ernie Bot'

Google's AI chatbot Bard, touted as a competitor to ChatGPT, shared inaccurate information in a promotional video

US Investments in Chinese AI companies totalled $40.2 billion from 2015 to 2021, making up for 37% of the total raised by the firms in the six-year period

Officials said funding was completed on Wednesday for the second phase of the advanced manufacturing fund, which invests in Chinese innovation sectors

43 party members on the institute's research team were monitored with artificial intelligence as part of the study, the report said

Chinese scientists say their new supercomputer rivals the US Frontier, ranked recently as the world's most powerful, claiming it "has successfully run an AI model as sophisticated as a human brain"

Curbs in China to contain the spread of Covid-19 appeared to boost demand for Baidu's cloud services and AI products, helping the group record revenue that topped estimates

Washington is ahead of Beijing in the race but can be expected to be overtaken, former Google boss Eric Schmidt said

The Malaysian Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation has a new AI park to help developers of agricultural and health technology bring their products to market