Baidu recently teamed up with a mobile phone manufacturer to showcase its generative AI technology on Lenovo smartphones With Lenovo, Baidu is looking for practical applications for its AI models.
The collaboration, which involves Lenovo using the Big Ernie language model, is similar to Baidu's collaboration with Samsung and Honor.
Lenovo sells phones under its own brand and owns the Motorola phone brand.
Ernie is available in the browser app and app store for Lenovo computers and tablets.
With the introduction of ChatGPT, a technology that became popular in late 2022, selling smartphones with generative AI features such as chatbots and real-time translation has become a new global trend.
Google is considered a pioneer in the field of AI-powered smartphones through its Pixel phones and cloud-based AI, while Apple is reportedly working on bringing generative AI models to iPhones.
Research firm Canalys predicts that 5%, or 60 million units, of global smartphone shipments in 2024 will be AI smartphones.
AI services powered by US companies like OpenAI and Google are not available in China, leaving the market to Chinese companies.
There are currently more than 200 AI models in the Chinese market, including models from major competitors Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent.
Baidu said in November that companies now need to focus on developing practical applications.
Chinese phone brands like Huawei, Xiaomi and Vivo are developing their own AI models in their devices but are yet to reveal any details.
The merger could help Baidu move into the smartphone space by combining its AI capabilities with those of smartphones, giving it access to large amounts of data that could enable its key language models to compete with its American rivals to catch up in the AI space. Intelligence.
“Adding large language models to smartphones is the perfect time to realize the long-term benefits of basic AI,” said Evan Lam, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint.