(Yicai) Jan. 15 -- Baidu said it is not cooperating with the Chinese army on Ernie Bot, after a market rumor led to the shares of the search and artificial intelligence company plunging by the most in more than a year.

Ernie Bot, the firm’s ChatGPT-like large language model, is available to and used by the general public. The academic paper published by scholars at a Chinese university described how the authors built prompts and received responses from LLMs, using the functions available to any user interacting with generative Al tools.

Baidu has not engaged in any business collaboration or provided any tailored service to authors of the academic paper or any institutions with which they are affiliated, the Beijing-based tech giant said in a statement this evening.

The South China Morning Post reported on Jan. 12 suggesting a connection between Baidu’s Ernie bot and a university lab affiliated with China's military.

Baidu’s Hong Kong-listed shares [HKG: 9888] closed 11.5 percent down at HKD100.50 (USD12.90) today. Its Nasdaq-listed equity [NASDAQ: BIDU] was 0.1 percent up in pre-market trading at 5.56 a.m. local time after slumping by 7 percent to USD109.11 on Jan. 12.

Editor: Emmi Laine