Baidu also Launching a ChatGPT Rival and the share price is growing up!

A frenzy over investing opportunities in artificial intelligence continues to benefit $Baidu(BIDU)$ , with shares in the Chinese tech giant rallying Tuesday after the company revealed concrete plans to launch a chatbot to rival the likes of popular ChatGPT.

American depositary receipts of Baidu jumped 12% in the market trading on Tuesday, bringing the 2023 gain for the shares above 20%. The stock's latest jump higher comes as Baidu detailed plans to launch an artificial intelligence chatbot in the coming months, confirming media reports that had telegraphed the move.

Baidu confirmed that the name of its AI chatbot would be called "ERNIE Bot" in English, and that the company plans to complete internal testing in March before making the chatbot available to the public.

China's answer to Google, Baidu's core business is in online search and advertising -- but it has recently begun to increase its focus on high-growth areas such as AI and cloud computing. Baidu's advances in AI so far include a booming autonomous ride-hailing arm that completed hundreds of thousands of rides in China last year, including offering the first fully driverless services in the country.

That has made Baidu well-positioned to benefit from an explosion of interest in AI this year, driven in part by widespread public attention on generative AI chatbot ChatGPT.

Amid an ongoing investor frenzy over AI stocks that shows few signs of stopping -- with $Alphabet(GOOGL)$ 's Google planning on rolling out its own chatbot called Bard in the coming weeks -- Baidu increasingly looks like a Chinese way to play the trend.

And the stock is looked upon favorably by Wall Street. Baidu has an average rating of Buy among analysts surveyed by FactSet, with an average price target on the ADRs of around $170. Even after recent gains -- with the shares poised to open around $160 on Tuesday -- that means there is still some implied upside.

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