Chinese AI applications want to go beyond chatbots

Beijing – A whole series of publications from the past week show how Chinese companies such as Deep -seek And Bytedance has developed quickly with models for artificial intelligence They compete with Chatgpt from OpenAi.

Now many companies in China are increasingly building on that basis for developing products that seem to go beyond a chatbot.

BaiduBest known for its search engine and ernie-chatbot, on Tuesday said that his generative AI-integrated Wenku platform had reached 40 million paying users for making powerpoints and other documents, with a turnover increase of 60% compared to a year ago end Last year. Utgued functions, such as the use of AI to generate a presentation based on the financial files of a company, were rolled out to users last week.

On the business side, Ben Yan, Data and Analytics director of Gartner, which uses more than 10% of companies in China AI, against 8% about six months ago. That would mean an acceleration of the pace – the last increase of 2 percentage points in adoption lasted more than a year, he said on Wednesday.

“We hear more and more success stories from our customers,” he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. Yan noted that so-called AI agents will help accelerate the business implementation of the new technology.

AI models focus on specific functions such as searching and generating summaries, while AI agents are more advanced: they can automate entire processes, from search to books. An example is the new ‘operator’ function of OpenAi, which claims to be able to make restaurant reservations on behalf of a chatgpt user.

AI agents are also about to enter the Chinese market on a large scale.

Tribute is planning to integrate AI agents with his Message and Social Media app WeChat soon, CEO Pony Ma told the staff in a speech of January 13, according to a copy of the annual speech seen by CNBC.

“We believe that the Chinese AI sector is making progress at a pace that is comparable to that of the United States,” says Jo Huang, head of Private Equity at Raffles Family Office, in an e-mail. She said that the company is considering investing in a leading China Ai Deep Tech Fund to take advantage of local opportunities.

The development of Chinese AI applications creates functions that are integrated with domestic smartphones. The AI ​​intelligence functions from Apple still have to become available for iPhone users in China.

“There is also a shift to a growing user preference for local brands that can offer advanced AI functions that are tailored to the preferences of regional consumers,” said Wei Sun, chief analyst in the field of artificial intelligence at Counterpoint Research, on Thursday in an E -mail.

She pointed out that Chinese smartphone companies such as Honor, Xiaomi and VIVO have been able to improve the user experience of AI functions, thanks to efforts to improve the efficiency of AI models that can run on the device without being strongly dependent on a connected to the internet Cloud. employ.

The latest developments also reflect a difference in regulation supervision with the US, and with the type of technology that is being created.

Baidu’s chatgpt-like Ernie-Bot did not get the green light from Beijing until August 2023 for a public rollout, almost a year after Chatgpt won the world stormant.

Although AI models must receive an official certification for use in China, its use in applications is much easier, says Alex Lu, founder of Shanghai-based LSY Consulting. In addition, he is working with a small team on an AI-driven tool with which companies can gain daily focused insights into trends in the sector and global regulations, similar to the work of a human consultant.

Half a year after the development started in June 2023, LU said that the team started testing a product for free with potential customers, including a manufacturer of cars. That has yielded the feedback for a product that the team hopes that it will charge 70,000 to 100,000 yuan ($ 9,660 to $ 13,790) to annual license costs, Lu said.

But a greater challenge can exist to give companies AI access to business data, or by using AI generated content commercially.

“I think [multinational corporations are] Much more cautiously than Chinese brands due to copyright and legal issues, “Chris Reitermann, CEO of Ogilvy Asia-Pacific and Greater China, told CNBC at the end of last year. He is also president of WPP China.

He said that customers tried to use AI for campaigns, but that they encountered compliance problems that prevented the launch of the projects. “Local brands may be less worried about these problems, more trial and error,” he said.

Some AI applications made by China are also used abroad. AlibabaThe international branch announced earlier this month that accio, its AI-driven search engine for product source, had done that reached 500,000 small business users.

Accio, launched in November, has companies used a few text or image prompts to find wholesale products- and offers them analyzes of their popularity among consumers and the expected profit.

ACCIO shortened the research time from weeks to about a day, says Mike Mcclary, who had early access to ACCIO and has been selling camping lamps and other products online for more than ten years. Mcclary, CEO of awesome.com, claims an e-commerce turnover of more than $ 1 million a year and is located outside of St. Louis, Missouri.

He said that Alibaba.com and Amazon, which he previously used, had to go through hundreds or thousands of results and then had to negotiate individually with five to ten suppliers before they came to one solution. The ‘next game changer’, McClary said, would be to use AI to place an image of a product in each scenario to create an advertisement.