Baidu sues Apple for allowing fake copies of its AI in the App Store

“Currently, Ernie does not have any official app,” Baidu said in a statement posted late on Friday on its official “Baidu AI” WeChat account. He also posted a photograph of his court appearance.

“Until our company’s official announcement, any Ernie app you see on the App Store or other stores is fake,” he said, while Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the news agency.

According to a search that the same outlet conducted on Saturday, it was found that there were still at least four apps with the Chinese name of the Ernie bot, all fake, in Apple’s App Store, as the Ernie bot is only available to users who request and receive access codes. In its statement, Baidu also warned against selling access codes.

The company claims that Baidu has capabilities similar to the OpenAI model, GPT-4, as it has 550 billion data points stored that “guarantee that your answers will be correct.”