(Bloomberg) -- Baidu Inc. debuted China’s answer to ChatGPT via a recorded video, disappointing investors hoping for a real-time demo of the country’s highest-profile entry in a race to dominate transformative technology.

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Billionaire founder Robin Li took to a Beijing stage to introduce his company’s “Ernie Bot,” a landmark moment for a search leader that’s struggled in recent years to revitalize growth. But instead of putting the service through its paces in real time, he talked over a scripted video of interactions with the AI. Baidu’s shares fell 6.4% in Hong Kong, wiping out about $3 billion of value.

Thursday’s launch was to have been a watershed moment for China’s technology industry, lifting the lid on how AI has progressed in the world’s largest internet economy. The omission raises questions over Ernie’s ability to match OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has both impressed and worried users since its November launch. Chinese AI efforts lag their US rivals at the moment, though they should catch up over time thanks to vast data hoards and experience with rapid rollouts, according to industry pioneer and bestselling author Kai-Fu Lee.

“It looks pre-recorded, and so far it’s all just Powerpoints. The demos did not look spontaneous,” said Yu Yingbo, chief investment officer at Shenzhen Qianhai United Fortune Fund Management Co. “He’s not citing anything on the database they are drawing from, or their model, or how it compares to ChatGPT. It’s all really vague and theoretical.”

Baidu will let consumers and cloud clients register for access to the AI chatbot starting Thursday, but didn’t say when they could actually use the service.