Baidu’s head of communications Qu Jing had implied in a series of videos that she was not concerned about her employees as she was “not their mom” and said she only cared about results. She also said that the relationship between her and her subordinates was purely an “employer-employee relationship.”Chinese online media outlet 36Kr first reported on late Thursday that Qu had left her position at Baidu, citing unnamed sources.
Qu said her videos did not represent Baidu’s stance. Baidu operates China’s dominant search engine as well as Ernie Bot, an artificial intelligence service similar to ChatGPT. Qu had also been criticised for other comments she made in the series of short videos on Douyin that have since been removed. She also criticised an employee who refused to go on a 50-day business trip during the COVID-19 pandemic - a time when China severely restricted movement and required weeks of quarantine for travellers.