AI

Samsung Aims to Regain China Market Share Through Baidu AI Partnership

11 July 2024

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Zaker Adham

Summary

Samsung has joined forces with Baidu, a leading AI company in China, in a strategic move to capture the Chinese market.

Baidu’s Ernie large language model (LLM) will replace Google Gemini AI for the Galaxy S24 series in China, where Google services are not available. This partnership, announced last week, positions Samsung to better compete in the world's largest smartphone market.

While Microsoft promotes Bing Chat in China, other U.S.-developed AI tools like ChatGPT and Google Bard are not officially available in mainland China or Hong Kong.

AI development is booming in China, with 40 LLMs approved by the state in the latter half of 2023. Domestic vendors like Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo are developing their own AI chatbots and LLMs, prompting Samsung to collaborate with Baidu.

What is Baidu’s Ernie LLM?

Ernie Bot, launched at Baidu World 2023 by co-founder and CEO Robin Li Yanhong, is the first significant generative AI from China's tech sector. Li highlighted Ernie Bot’s advancements in understanding, prompting, reasoning, and memory, asserting that its capabilities rival those of GPT-4.

By December, Baidu's Chief Technology Officer Wang Haifeng reported that Ernie had surpassed 100 million users since its August 2023 release. Baidu has also collaborated with the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS), donating a quantum computing lab to foster further AI development.

China’s AI Race

The U.S. has sought to limit China’s access to advanced processors crucial for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) due to security concerns. This effort was underscored by a recent significant chip bust valued at $11.6 million.