On Thursday, China’s Baidu rolled out its ChatGPT rival ERNIE Bot to the public.

ERNIE Bot is the first domestic AI app to be fully available to the public in China. It is not available outside the country.

“We are thrilled to share that ERNIE Bot is now fully open to the general public starting August 31,” Baidu said in a statement.

“In addition to ERNIE Bot, Baidu is set to launch a suite of new AI-native apps that allow users to fully experience the four core abilities of generative AI: understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory.”

ERNIE Bot was released in March but its availability was limit ..

The Chinese government introduced fresh regulations this month for AI developers, aiming to allow them to stay in the race with the likes of Microsoft and OpenAI but still tightly controlling information online.