BEIJING, April 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Baidu, Inc.
(NASDAQ:BIDU) today launched several biodiversity protection
initiatives that will leverage the company's leading positions
in online content, mobile, and AI to promote scientific
knowledge about wildlife protection and fight against illegal
online marketplaces for wildlife products.
Baidu has partnered with China's National Forestry and Grassland
Administration (NFGA), the China Wildlife Conservation Association
(CWCA), and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) to
disseminate authoritative information about biodiversity to
netizens and promote sustainable lifestyles. Experts at these
partner organizations have provided Baidu high-quality content
about wildlife conservation, which Baidu is now using to optimize
search results on its information-centered platforms,
including Baidu App, Baidu Knows, Baidu Encyclopedia, and others.
For example, in response to a search query about selling wildlife,
Baidu will display an explanation of the relevant Chinese legal
provisions that prohibit selling wildlife in most circumstances. On
Baidu App, if a user searches what happens to elephants that lose
their tusks, the top result will be a Baidu Knows entry from IFAW
that explains the vital importance of tusks for elephants. On Baidu
Knows, if a user asks "can I eat Chinese alligator?", the top
result will be a response from NFGA explaining that the Chinese
alligator is a first-class protected species in China and cannot be eaten. Baidu also launched
the Earth Diversity Nature Archive (Earth DNA), an online library
for scientific knowledge about wildlife protection, which will
include content co-developed by Baidu and its
partners.
By increasing access to authoritative information about
biodiversity, Baidu's aim is for more users to make
environmentally-friendly decisions. As the world's largest Chinese
language search engine, and with an expansive mobile ecosystem of
information and knowledge-centered platforms, Baidu is uniquely
positioned to encourage netizens to adopt greener lifestyles and
promote a more harmonious relationship between humans and
nature. Due to the harmful impacts of humans on the
environment, one million animal and plant species are threatened
with extinction, according to a May
2019 report from the United Nations on the global state of
biodiversity. As the human population and resource consumption
continues to grow, safeguarding biodiversity will require concerted
efforts from companies, governments, organizations, and individuals
around the world.
In line with this vision, Baidu, CWCA, and IFAW launched an
initiative calling on individual users and peer technology
companies to contribute to wildlife protection. The initiative
urges users to adhere to laws that protect wildlife, respect
nature, and develop green consumption habits. It also calls on
technology companies to co-operate to develop AI-powered
applications that protect wildlife, and to eliminate illegal
wildlife trade on their online platforms.
Baidu also launched the "AI Guardian of Endangered Species", an
AI-powered tool to identify online images of products related to
endangered wildlife, which will empower organizations to monitor
and crack down on the illegal wildlife trade. Jointly developed by
Baidu's open source deep learning platform PaddlePaddle and IFAW,
the tool has obtained a 75% accuracy rate at recognizing images of
products made from elephant ivory, pangolin scales and claws, and
tiger teeth, skin, and claws. During a five month testing period,
the tool recognized 3,348 images of illegal wildlife products that
were being traded on Chinese internet platforms. In recent years,
the illegal wildlife trade has shifted to online platforms, with
sellers relying on images and other techniques to advertise their
products while avoiding detection. Baidu will open source the
tool's identification model on PaddlePaddle so that other
developers can build AI applications for combatting the illegal
wildlife trade.
Through these initiatives, Baidu hopes to safeguard biodiversity
by delivering high-quality content to users, halting the illegal
trade of wildlife online, and making the protection of wildlife a
core business purpose, strengthening its existing commitment to
biodiversity, according to a Baidu
spokesperson.
The participation of technology companies in environmental
governance is increasingly important because they can implement
innovative, high-tech solutions at a global scale, said the IFAW
China director, adding that environmental initiatives form a
foundation for sustainable and successful business operations.
This past year, Baidu partnered with the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to optimize search results about
endangered species. Meanwhile, Baidu has cleaned up more than
260,000 damaging pieces of online information related to wildlife
and blocked information promoting the illegal wildlife trade 1.4
million times. Moving forward, Baidu will continue to ensure that
its technology is a force for safeguarding biodiversity.
About Baidu
Baidu, Inc. is a leading search engine, knowledge and
information centered Internet platform and
AI company. The Company's mission is to make the
complicated world simpler 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.
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SOURCE Baidu, Inc.