Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) today announced it will deepen AI
integration into its mobile ecosystem for a more dynamic, connected
and seamless user experience at the Baidu Create 2019 AI Developer
Conference.
At the Baidu Create plenary session, Dou Shen, Senior Vice
President and General Manager of Baidu’s Mobile Ecosystem Group,
delivered a keynote speech and shared his insights on what upgrades
AI technology has made to user experience for mobile ecosystem
products, such as Baidu App. He also shared an update on new
developments in the Baidu App Smart Mini Program to build “New
Connection” for users and developers. Shen said the application of
AI technologies on Baidu App has accelerated the maturity of
products based on speech and image recognition, bringing more
surprise in terms of user experience. The development of Smart Mini
Program enables Baidu App to enhance user experience by providing
not only information, but also other products and services. “With
the evolving Baidu App as the core, Baidu is creating a ‘New
Mobile, New Connection, and New Ecosystem’,” he said.
‘Everyone can AI’: AI improves users’ connections with
information onlineAfter years of development, Baidu's AI
technology has been successfully applied across many verticals.
Baidu's core product, Baidu App, is empowered by cutting-edge AI
technology that helps it to understand user needs by connecting
people and information efficiently and driving app growth. The
number of Baidu App daily active users has reached 188 million,
making it one of the largest digital media and service platforms in
China. At the same time, the entire Baidu mobile ecosystem is
growing, and the number of monthly active devices running Baidu
mobile apps has reached 1.1 billion.
Shen began his keynote with a presentation of Baidu’s
PaddlePaddle mobile deployment library, designed for mobile as a
subset of the PaddlePaddle deep learning platform. It optimizes
specific scenarios on the mobile terminal and reduces model size to
300KB, achieving ultra-high performance with low power consumption.
It currently supports eight kinds of hardware and software
platforms, achieving full-platform coverage on mobile terminals.
Using the PaddlePaddle mobile deployment library, Baidu App has
inspired two technologies: “Image Super Resolution” and “Dynamic
Multi-Target Recognition”.
"Image Super Resolution" is a computer vision technology that
uses deep learning to improve image and video resolution. This
technology increases real-time image and video resolution by 2-4
times and saves 50% to 75% of the bandwidth cost for developers.
This means that users can save vast amounts of traffic without
compromising image quality when viewing picture and video on Baidu
App. In his speech, Shen announced that the “Super Resolution”
technology won first place at the NTIRE (New Trends in Image
Restoration and Enhancement Workshop), the most influential
competition in the field of computer vision for low-level
vision.
"Dynamic Multi-Target Recognition" is another technology based
on the PaddlePaddle mobile deployment library, which enables the
Baidu App to track and recognize multiple objects that appear on
the screen in real time through a smartphone’s camera. Shen gave a
demonstration of how the real-time identification works. When
shopping for cosmetic products, the Baidu App tracked their name,
similar products, price comparisons and links to e-commerce
platforms. Baidu optimized the cloud-based multi-layer visual model
from more than 200 layers to slightly over 10 layers for "Dynamic
Multi-Target Recognition". It recognizes more than 10 million
items, identifies them within 100 milliseconds and tracks their
location within 8 milliseconds, making the image recognition on
Baidu App industry-leading.
Baidu App’s powerful natural language processing technology and
knowledge graph provide users with the most effective answers from
across the Internet using “Voice Search”. Lun Deng, Baidu App
Ambassador, gave a live demonstration on stage, using the “Voice
Search” on Baidu App to ask: “Who is taller, Kobe or Sakuragi (a
character from popular Japanese TV series Slam Dunk)?” and “Curry
and James, who scores more on average?” The answers were highly
accurate and precision search were results returned.
1st anniversary of Baidu Smart Mini Program: "New
Connection" improves efficiency and upgrades modes
At last year’s Baidu Create, Baidu officially released its Smart
Mini Program. After just one year, the Baidu Smart Mini Program
platform now has more than 150,000 developers and its daily active
users has reached 250 million. The development of the Smart Mini
Program ecosystem has helped the Baidu App to demonstrate its "New
Connection" capabilities and its ability to connect people and
information. Shen said that Baidu App's "New Connection" should be
understood from two dimensions. First, for users, the "New
Connection" means that people can achieve a seamless experience
from shopping online to buying goods and services. While for
developers, the "New Connection" means that efficiency and mode
upgrades can be achieved through the Smart Mini Program
Platform.
Examples of developers using the Smart Mini Program ecosystem to
improve efficiency were showcased at the event. For example, after
“Eggshell Apartment“ was launched on the Baidu Smart Mini Program
platform, its conversion rate increased by 32% and the cost of lead
acquisition decreased by 98%; Aihuishou, an online platform for
electronics recycling, increased its ROI by 85% and
conversion rate by 112%. Shen said that, in addition to helping
developers improve their efficiency, the “New Connection” of Baidu
Smart Mini Program can help developers digitize traditional
businesses and upgrade their business models by combining online
and offline activities, thus building new business models on Baidu
App.
To help brands better realize their commercial operations’
success on Baidu App, Shen introduced the direct e-commerce
solution jointly created with Youzan. This project can help all
kinds of direct e-commerce retailers set up online shops on Baidu,
obtain customers accurately, conduct online transactions and
achieve continuous user operation. The Baidu Smart Mini Program has
changed the previous fragmented interactive experience that
requires users to jump to other apps or H5 pages. After using the
Baidu App to search or browse the desired products, users can
complete a closed transaction loop directly within the ecosystem of
the Smart Mini Programs. Currently, Youzan has helped over 100
brands in various industries to join Baidu’s Smart Mini Program
ecosystem.
There have been many such cases of model upgrading, including
the Shanghai Auto Show smart mini program, which has facilitated
seamless scenario transition from search, to feed to electronic
pass. The smart mini program served more than 3 million people
within a month, and its ticket sales ranked first among all
third-party ticketing channels. Similarly, technology information
portal Zol.com.cn has realized an upgrade from a content platform
to a trading platform via the smart mini program and it is expected
to help 50,000 offline retail stores join the Baidu Smart Mini
Program platform in next three years.
From the launch of the twin engines of “search + feed” in 2017
to the launch of Smart Mini Program to achieve “New Connection” in
2018, Baidu App has been continuously evolving to help developers
better serve users by meeting their needs. At the end of his
speech, Shen extended an invitation to developers, saying that “the
new connection is an opportunity for the mobile ecosystem. We
sincerely welcome developers to work with Baidu to provide users
with a brand-new mobile experience that is ubiquitous and
authoritative.”
About BaiduBaidu, Inc. is the
leading Chinese language Internet search provider. Baidu aims to
make the complicated world simpler for users and enterprises
through technology. Baidu’s ADSs trade on the NASDAQ Global Select
Market under the symbol “BIDU.” Currently, ten ADSs represent one
Class A ordinary share.
Media
ContactIntlcomm@baidu.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8bdd8172-3018-420c-b062-1371e4f592d8
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