China's search engine giant Baidu reported better-than-expected revenue of 34.1 billion yuan ($4.7 billion) in the second quarter of 2023, up 15% year-on-year.

Earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis were 22.55 yuan, compared to 15.79 yuan in the year-ago period.

The company's online marketing revenue rose 15% to 19.6 billion yuan, and non-online marketing revenue added 12% to 6.8 billion yuan.

Baidu's CEO Robin Li attributed the strong revenue growth to the company's use of artificial intelligence (AI) to better match ads to Baidu search queries.

He also said that Baidu is committed to developing on generative AI and large language models (LLMs), which he believes have the potential to transform many industries.

Since launching its own LLM, Ernie, and its ChatGPT-like product, Ernie Bot, in March, the company has been working on making it available to the public and integrating it into various services.

Last week, Baidu announced that five Ernie Bot plugins, including those for quickly converting text to video and for PDF search, would be more widely available to users. According to the company, three of the plugins can also be used simultaneously.

The company plans to add plugins from third-party developers, Li said on the earnings call.

Baidu has its sights set on extending the influence of AI into the automotive sector. Recently, the company entered into a strategic agreement with state-owned Changan Automobile, with the aim of developing autonomous driving capabilities based on the AI model underpinning Ernie Bot.

Additionally, the robo-taxi business, which operates under the name Apollo Go, took about 714,000 robo-taxi trips, up from 660,000 in the first quarter.