Written by Josh Yeh
HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s Baidu has partnered with Lenovo to integrate its generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology into Lenovo’s smartphones. This is the company’s latest partnership with a mobile phone manufacturer seeking to put its AI models to practical use.
A spokesperson for Beijing-based Baidu told Reuters this week that the partnership includes Lenovo using its Ernie Large Language Model (LLM) and is similar to the partnership with Samsung and Honor announced last month. He said it was similar to a partnership.
Lenovo sells its own branded mobile phones and also owns the mobile phone brand Motorola. Ernie is already integrated into Lenovo’s browser and app store apps for personal computers and tablets.
Lenovo did not respond to a request for comment.
The sale of smartphones that offer generative AI capabilities for services such as chatbots and real-time translation has become an emerging global trend since the technology became popular with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.
Google is seen as the leader in AI smartphones with its Pixel phones and robust cloud-based AI, and Apple is reportedly working on bringing generative AI models to the iPhone.
Research firm Canalys predicts that by 2024, 5% of smartphones shipped worldwide, or 60 million units, will be AI-enabled smartphones.
However, AI services provided by U.S. companies such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Google are not available in China, leaving the market to Chinese companies. There are currently more than 200 AI models available in the Chinese market, including those from Baidu’s main rivals Alibaba and Tencent.
Baidu CEO Robin Li said last November that companies now need to focus on developing practical applications. Top Chinese mobile phone brands such as Vivo, Xiaomi, and Huawei are also working on their own on-device AI models, but have not disclosed details.
Such a collaboration with smartphones will not only help Baidu in this area, but by tightly bundling its AI capabilities with smartphones, Baidu’s LLM will have a huge amount of potential to help it catch up with rival AI companies in the US. You may also be exposed to data.
Ivan Lam, an analyst at research firm Counterpoint, said, “Adapting LLM to smartphones is the perfect time to promote AI-powered features.However, while this may be limited at the moment, in the long term. may become “required”.”
(Reporting by Josh Ye; Editing by Brenda Goh and Christian Schmollinger)
