Chinese firm Baidu has sent in a lawsuit to Apple and other developers due to the rising number of fake Ernie AI apps in the App Store.

Baidu filed the lawsuit on Friday in Beijing Haidian People’s Court, citing that the App Store and developers are putting out fake apps of its Ernie app. It’s believed that the company is forcing Apple to remove the fake apps and stop developers from uploading them to the App Store.
Ernie or Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration is an AI bot that’s similar to Google Bard and ChatGPT. With Ernie, users can request information or ask questions and the program will provide an answer from its knowledge database. Ernie launched in March but Baidu has yet to create an official app for the AI chatbot, leaving developers to take advantage, and put their fake apps on the market. Apple has yet to comment on the lawsuit.