Tag: ERNIE

To compete with DeepSeek R1, which has attracted widespread adoption, Baidu recently announced updates to its multimodal-enabled base model, ERNIE 4.5 (Wenxin 4.5), and its deep inference model, ERNIE X1, boasting that the latter's cost is only half that of DeepSeek R1. Furthermore, Baidu upgraded its chatbot, Wenxin Yiyan (ERNIE Bot), to support both ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 models. ERNIE 4.5 claims to simultaneously understand text, images, audio, and video content, as well as the context of content descriptions. It can also understand internet memes and satirical cartoons, outperforming OpenAI's GPT-4.5 in multimodal operation and surpassing GPT-4.5, GPT-4o, and DeepSeek V3 Chat in text comprehension. Regarding usage costs, Baidu claims that ERNIE 4.5 costs only RMB 0.004 per 1000 input tokens, just 1% of GPT-4.5, while the output cost is RMB 0.016 per 1000 input tokens. ERNIE X1 excels in Chinese knowledge comprehension question answering, literary creation, writing, dialogue, logical reasoning, and complex calculations. It also supports advanced search, document content comprehension question answering, image recognition, image generation, interpreter coding, webpage reading, and tree diagram mapping. Furthermore, it can serve as the system behind Baidu Academic Search and in business information-related search applications. Baidu states that ERNIE X1 starts at RMB 0.002 per 1000 input tokens, almost half the cost of DeepSeek R1, while the output cost is RMB 0.008 per 1000 input tokens.

According to The Information, Apple's plan to bring its "Apple Intelligence" service to the Chinese market may face challenges due to strict Chinese government regulations on related technologies. Previous reports indicated that Apple was in talks with AI model providers such as Baidu, Alibaba, and BaiChuan Intelligence, potentially following a similar model to its collaboration with OpenAI in the US to bring "Apple Intelligence" to China. Apple might initially adopt Baidu's large-scale natural language processing model, Ernie 4.0, to provide a localized version of "Apple Intelligence" while complying with relevant regulations in China. However, Apple and Baidu may still disagree on how data is used. For example, Baidu wants to further utilize iPhone user data for AI model training, but Apple's privacy policy does not allow this. Therefore, further compromises, coupled with regulations on AI technology applications in China, could significantly limit the user experience of "Apple Intelligence" in the Chinese market. However, Apple has not yet explained its cooperation model outside the United States, so it is still uncertain whether it will cooperate with companies such as Baidu in the Chinese market as rumored.

At Baidu World 2024 in Shanghai, Baidu announced that its AI model, ERNIE, has accumulated 4.3 million users. It also announced the launch of the "Free Canvas" AI creation tool, combining Baidu Wenku and Baidu Cloud services, making it easier for users to gather various information for creation. Additionally, it launched AI glasses under the Xiaodu brand. Regarding the "Free Canvas" AI creation tool, Baidu emphasizes its challenge to provide a more free experience in document aggregation and content reorganization. It boasts that this tool can more easily aggregate information from various sources, filter and organize it using AI technology, and extract key information to create entirely new content, allowing users to complete content organization or rewriting more efficiently. The Xiaodu AI glasses, weighing only 45 grams, offer approximately 5 hours of continuous music playback. Powered by Baidu's AI model, Wenxin Yiyan, they can interact via natural voice. The 1600-megapixel camera captures images of the surrounding environment, which are then analyzed and described by the AI ​​assistant, enabling functions such as playing music and tracking calorie consumption. Similar to the smart glasses developed in collaboration with Meta and Ray-Ban, the Xiaodu AI glasses are expected to ship in 2025, but a specific price has not yet been announced. In other areas, Baidu has launched an iRAG automatic image generation tool, boasting the ability to create more realistic user-described image content. Additionally, they have released a no-coding tool called "Miaoda," allowing users to quickly build application services verbally, expected to be available in the first quarter of next year. In addition to stating that Wenxin Yiyan has accumulated over 4.3 million users and has a daily usage volume of over 15 billion, Baidu CEO Robin Li further stated that the Wenxin Intelligent Agent platform is currently used by over 15 enterprises and 80 developers, and that more than half of China's state-owned enterprises use Baidu Cloud to build artificial intelligence models.

Following its announcement last year of the launch of its ERNIE large-scale natural language model and the "ERNIE Bot" AI chatbot, Baidu recently unveiled DuerOS X, its first operating system natively integrated with AI design, at the Create 2024 Baidu AI Developer Conference in Shenzhen, China. Baidu's subsidiary, Xiaodu Technology, stated that DuerOS X is based on the ERNIE large-scale natural language model, natively integrating multimodal perception and human-like presentation applications to enhance the human-computer interaction experience on devices, enabling Xiaodu Technology's hardware products to communicate naturally with people. Compared to DuerOS launched in 2017, Xiaodu Technology emphasizes that this operating system for hardware devices such as Xiaodu smart speakers has been updated to version 7.0. Furthermore, the newly launched DuerOS X natively integrates numerous AI application functions and combines the "ERNIE Bot" AI chatbot technology, achieving a 95% satisfaction rate in language understanding through deep learning and self-learning. Xiaodu Technology stated that DuerOS X can now accurately recognize text word by word and quickly understand content, responding promptly and correctly. Furthermore, it can understand and respond to contextual information, integrating with various video services, tools, health applications, information queries, and connecting to over 5200 skills to provide users with a more immersive interactive experience. This operating system will also be applied to Baidu's hardware devices and will continue to accumulate more learning experience through human interaction.

After launching its Galaxy S24 series flagship phones with Galaxy AI capabilities globally, Samsung opted for a different approach in the Chinese market. Instead of using Google's AI technology, the version offered by Samsung partnered with Baidu, leveraging its large-scale natural language processing model, ERNIE, to drive various AI applications. Baidu later confirmed its collaboration with Samsung, providing AI technology for the Chinese version of the Galaxy S24 series, including text organization, summarization, and translation functions for Samsung Notes. The Galaxy AI features offered in the Chinese market are expected to remain free until 2025; Samsung has not yet commented on whether they will be offered as a paid service thereafter. The Chinese version of the Galaxy S24 series also features a Circle to Search function, but the underlying search technology is likely based on Baidu's search service. Furthermore, the Chinese version of the Galaxy S24 series offers real-time translation during phone calls, a feature expected to be powered by Samsung's proprietary Gauss natural language processing model. While Samsung is actively expanding its presence in the Chinese market, the continued competition from Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Honor, along with Apple's iPhone's 17.3% market share last year, making it the most popular mobile phone in China, has prevented Samsung from breaking into the top five mobile phone sellers. Therefore, this year Samsung may hope to attract consumers by offering AI-powered mobile applications to boost sales. However, with Chinese brands like Xiaomi and OPPO also expanding their "AI Phone" user experience, and given Samsung's strong local integration advantages, it may be difficult for Samsung to find opportunities for growth against the trend in the Chinese market.

Currently, online map services such as Google Maps have added multi-destination navigation features, while Baidu Maps uses artificial intelligence technology to allow users to directly describe their destinations verbally and automatically add the next navigation route, making it easier for users to plan their trips intuitively. The "AI Guide" feature newly added in Baidu Maps v19 incorporates the previously announced Wenxin large-scale natural language model for reconstruction, allowing users to use the Xiaodu digital assistant to perform location searches, route planning, and navigation in natural language, and even plan their trips through artificial intelligence. Compared to the past when users had to manually add stops along the way, this update allows for voice control, and even more intuitive route planning. For example, describing "I want to go to Starbucks, and I'll fill up the gas station on the way" will automatically guide the user to Starbucks and add a route to the gas station along the way. Meanwhile, leveraging the natural semantic understanding capabilities of the Wenxin Big Model, Baidu emphasizes that even if users describe their intended destination using different local vocabulary and terminology, Baidu Maps can continuously learn and understand, providing users with accurate navigation results. It can even work with the recently launched real-time parking lot navigation function to help users find nearby parking lots with enough spaces more quickly.

At Baidu World Conference 2023, Baidu CEO Robin Li stated that Baidu's semantic understanding platform, ERNIE, has undergone a comprehensive upgrade, showing significant improvements in understanding, generation, inference, and memory, and is in no way inferior to OpenAI's GPT-4. During the event, demonstrations showed that AI powered by ERNIE could create multiple car advertisements in a short time using concise text descriptions, quickly solve complex geometric problems, and update short story plots. Further explanation from Baidu revealed that the current version 4.0 of ERNIE will integrate an improved search experience similar to Google's, integrating and summarizing broader online information as answers, allowing users to obtain the latest and most accurate information. Simultaneously, ERNIE will be able to operate in multiple modes, enabling more complex search processes through an interactive chat interface and providing more accurate answers by referencing numerous user interactions. In terms of security, the new version of "Wenxin" adopts a design similar to ChatGPT Enterprise Edition, training users' personal information in an isolated manner, thus eliminating the risk of personal information being accessed by others. It also supports functions such as academic research, summarizing or abstracting key content, creating documents, and automatically generating presentation content. Furthermore, it allows for data searching via text or voice commands. Currently, Baidu has integrated its automatically generated AI into its Baidu Maps, navigation, ride-hailing, and hotel booking services, and can also assist individuals and businesses in creating API content through the Baidu Qianfan basic model platform.

Baidu announced that its recently unveiled AI chatbot, "Wenxin Yiyan," is now open to the public, and its functionality can be extended through plug-ins. According to Baidu's previous explanation, "Wenxin Yiyan" is built on the ERNIE semantic understanding platform, trained on a foundation encompassing trillions of web pages, billions of search and image data points, tens of billions of daily voice calls, and a 550 billion-point fact-related knowledge graph. To further improve "Wenxin Yiyan's" operating speed, Baidu stated that it has increased the computing power of its Yangquan Intelligent Computing Center in Shanxi to 400 quadrillion floating-point operations per second, and will work with other Baidu computing centers to promote the operation of "Wenxin Yiyan." Furthermore, "Wenxin Yiyan" can output text, images, audio, or video content according to user needs, and boasts compatibility with literary creation, business copywriting, mathematical calculations, and Chinese comprehension. It also supports multiple operating modes, automatically generating various content to meet different user requirements. In an earlier statement, Baidu indicated that the training data throughput of its "Wenxin Yiyan" AI tool has increased more than threefold since its March announcement, and it is now better equipped to handle data analysis and image visualization. With the rise of automatically generated AI technology, the Chinese government recently announced draft regulations for AI-based services, stipulating that AI-generated text content must conform to socialist values ​​and must be reviewed before being provided to users. Baidu is one of the first companies to receive approval from the Chinese government, demonstrating that while the government aims to strictly control the application of AI technology, it also hopes that domestic companies can develop technologies that compete with overseas competitors.

Following its earlier teaser of an AI chatbot called "Wenxin Yiyan," Baidu officially announced this automatically generated AI application service. "Wenxin Yiyan" is built on the ERNIE semantic understanding platform, trained on a foundation encompassing trillions of web pages, billions of search and image data points, tens of billions of daily voice calls, and a 5500 billion-point fact-related knowledge graph. To further enhance "Wenxin Yiyan's" operating speed, Baidu stated that it has increased the computing power of its Yangquan Intelligent Computing Center in Shanxi to 400 quadrillion floating-point operations per second, and will collaborate with other Baidu computing centers to promote the service. Compared to OpenAI's earlier GPT-4 large-scale language model, Baidu emphasizes that "Wenxin Yiyan" can output text, images, audio, or video content according to user needs, and boasts compatibility with literary creation, business copywriting, mathematical calculations, and Chinese comprehension. It also supports multi-mode operation, thus meeting various content generation needs. Baidu revealed that more than 650 businesses have already integrated with the "Wenxin Yiyan" technology application. Businesses will be able to make reservations to apply for API access to "Wenxin Yiyan", while general users can apply to experience it through an invitation code.

Following recent reports that Baidu would launch an AI application solution similar to ChatGPT in March, it has now confirmed the release of a chatbot product called "ERNIE Bot." This chatbot is based on the ERNIE language model, providing cross-language and modal deep language understanding capabilities, and faster interactive content generation. According to Baidu, "ERNIE Bot" will belong to the model layer in Baidu's four-layer AI development structure, which also includes chips, deep learning frameworks, and top-level search and other application services. This chatbot product is expected to launch this March as Baidu's competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT, but specific details have not yet been released. Besides Baidu, Google has also confirmed its "Bard" AI chatbot to compete with OpenAI, while Microsoft has chosen to collaborate deeply with OpenAI, and Apple seems to be planning to develop more advanced AI technology applications.