Last week, the public got a peek at China’s best shot at competing in the chatbot craze when search giant Baidu released its chatbot, named Ernie. It didn’t go well.  Baidu’s stock fell 10 percent shortly after Ernie’s reveal, largely because CEO Robin Li demonstrated Ernie’s capabilities with a pre-recorded video, not a live demo, leaving many doubtful about the chatbot’s true capabilities. (Baidu’s stock has since rebounded.) While internet users are free to experiment with San Francisco-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Baidu’s product still isn’t fully available for public testing.  Part of the reason for Ernie’s delayed rollout may be Beijing’s apprehension about the technology.  Indeed, Chinese developers face one major hurdle that their Western competitors don’t: their government’s draconian information controls. As internet users in the West have shown, generative AI models like ChatGPT are hard to tame, spitting out unexpected and some