Chinese
companies
are
making
announcements
about
artificial
intelligence
again
–
this
time
about
applications.
Search
engine
giant
Baidu
earlier
this
month
revealed,
among
other
AI
tools,
a
platform
for
creating
advertising
campaigns
–
similar
to
Google’s
AI-powered
ads.
Early
corporate
testers
of
Baidu’s
AI
ad
platform,
called
QingGe,
told
reporters
conversion
rates
are
up
20%
–
at
a
fraction
of
the
typical
time
an
agency
would
usually
need.
“Early
movers
in
the
[large
language
model]
market
have
already
started
the
commercialization
process,
and
regulatory
approval
for
10+
LLMs
to
open
to
the
public
has
further
cleared
roadblocks
to
monetization,”
Nomura
analysts
said
in
a
Sept.
10
note,
citing
meetings
with
businesses
and
industry
experts
in
Beijing
in
the
few
days
prior.
Around
the
same
time,
Tencent
announced
it
is
integrating
its
AI
model
into
advertising
content
creation,
and
its
own
Zoom-like
video
conferencing
app.
The
company
also
opened
the
waitlist
for
a
ChatGPT-like
chatbot
that
sits
within
its
social
messaging
app
WeChat.
Known
locally
as
Weixin,
the
app
has
more
than
1
billion
users.
That
scale
is
the
advantage
China
has
had,
coupled
with
an
ability
to
ramp
up
internet
penetration
to
support
an
online
ecosystem
–
from
Taobao
e-commerce
sales
to
scan-to-ride
bike
shares.
Open-minded
consumer
Locals
are
still
eager
to
participate.
Luckin
Coffee
teamed
up
with
Chinese
alcohol
giant
Kweichow
Moutai
this
month
to
sell
a
spiked
latte.
It
sold
more
than
5.4
million
cups
on
the
first
day,
Luckin
said.
That
surge
in
popularity
just
“reinforces
our
understanding
and
our
belief
that
Chinese
consumers
are
very
open-minded
with
new
products,”
Joey
Wat,
CEO
of
KFC
parent
Yum
China
,
told
me
on
Friday.
Her
company
is
also
exploring
how
to
use
generative
AI
to
boost
business,
but
she
said
the
tech
needs
to
understand
more
about
internal
operations
before
it
can
be
really
helpful.
It’s
also
not
clear
how
powerful
China’s
AI
applications
currently
are,
beyond
demos
and
select
business
partnerships.
“Overall
we
see
generally
Chinese
language
model[s]
still
lag
behind
the
most
advanced
ChatGPT
version
4,”
CLSA’s
Tony
Zhang
said
in
a
phone
interview
in
the
last
week.
But
“China’s
LLM
is
developing
very
fast
and
improving
very
fast.”
He
said
some
new
AI
tools
in
China
—
such
as
integration
with
word
processing,
in
commercial
advertising
or
in
consulting
–
could
be
the
first
few
fields
with
real
commercial
use.
“There
are
some
kind
of
applications
open
to
the
general
user
for
some
enterprise
users,
I
think
this
is
a
necessary
process,
[a]
model
to
improve
and
also
explore
their
monetization
model,”
he
said.
In
general,
the
more
generative
AI
is
used,
the
better
it
is
supposed
to
get.
Now
with
Beijing’s
green
light,
public-facing
AI
applications
such
as
Baidu’s
Ernie
bot
can
be
widely
used
in
China.
Alibaba
Cloud
on
Wednesday
said
it
was
opening
its
large
language
model
Tongyi
Qianwen
to
the
public,
and
said
it
was
working
with
Taobao,
smartphone
brand
Oppo
and
others
to
create
applications.
How
to
play
it
Just
testing
can
bring
in
revenue.
Generative
AI
and
large
language
model-related
revenue
contributed
to
20%
of
SenseTime’
s
revenue
in
the
first
half
of
2023,
Nomura
analysts
said,
citing
company
management.
While
Nomura
doesn’t
have
a
rating
on
SenseTime,
or
most
of
the
companies
the
analysts
visited
this
month,
the
investment
firm
has
a
neutral
rating
on
Baidu
and
a
buy
rating
on
Tencent.
For
a
sense
of
what
applications
at
scale
can
mean
for
business
efficiency
and
reach,
it’s
worth
looking
at
the
giant
in
the
room
of
AI
and
consumer-facing
applications:
ByteDance,
owner
of
TikTok
and
its
equally
popular
version
in
China,
Douyin.
The
apps
allow
brands
to
quickly
assess
what
works
–
and
what
doesn’t
–
with
consumers,
Oliver
Wyman’s
David
Xie
said.
He’s
working
on
an
upcoming
report
with
Douyin
that
found
one
apparel
brand
was
able
to
use
its
presence
on
the
app
to
influence
consumers
to
make
a
purchase
far
more
quickly
than
on
Alibaba’s
Tmall
–
by
about
two
weeks.
“Previously,”
he
said,
“when
you
don’t
have
these
kinds
of
content
platform,
all
you
can
do
is
run
2,000-sample
survey.”
In
China,
there
is
a
market
of
hundreds
of
millions
of
internet
users
who
can’t
easily
use
ChatGPT
or
Google.
