AI, as a representative of cutting-edge technology, is reshaping various industries at an unprecedented speed. "As long as you have ideas, you can achieve what you want, and we will usher in an unprecedented era of making money only by ideas", Robin Lee, founder of Baidu, said at Baidu World 2024 Conference.
On November 12th, the Baidu World 2024 Conference was held in Shanghai. The annual Baidu World Conference is an important stage for Baidu to showcase disruptive innovation achievements and consolidate its industry position. This year, Baidu not only released a series of cross disciplinary innovative products, but also opened up a new growth trajectory with the Wenxin Big Model as the core engine.
From iRAG technology that eliminates illusions to the codeless application "Instant", from intelligent agent exploration to the construction of AI content ecology, Baidu is empowering enterprise digital transformation with comprehensive and in-depth technological innovation, and enhancing the application experience of individual users and developers. As an industry leader, Baidu, with its profound technological accumulation and forward-looking strategic layout, continuously breaks through in the fields of AI and cloud computing, leading the wave of technological innovation.
Technological leadership
The effectiveness of the Wenxin big model is highlighted
At the conference, Baidu released multiple cross disciplinary innovative achievements, covering multiple cutting-edge fields such as iRAG technology, codeless applications, and intelligent agent exploration.
IRAG, a retrieval enhanced text generated image technology, deeply integrates the massive image resources searched by Baidu with powerful basic models to generate various hyper realistic images. Compared with traditional text and image tools, iRAG leads image generation technology to new heights with its unique advantages of "no illusions, hyper realism, no cost, and instant availability".
The newly defined no code product "Zida" is a subversion of the traditional software development model. Relying on the powerful code automatic generation capability of large models, users do not need to master complex programming skills. They can easily build systems by describing requirements in natural language, greatly reducing the technical threshold. The codeless product "Suida" has three core functions: codeless programming, multi-agent collaboration, and multi tool invocation, providing users with a flexible and efficient operating environment.
In terms of intelligent agents, Baidu has also announced the launch of a series of innovative products, including company based intelligent agents, role based intelligent agents, tool based intelligent agents, and industry based intelligent agents, aimed at redefining the human-computer interaction mode and injecting strong impetus into B2B intelligent applications.
The deep exploration in the field of AI is opening up a new growth trajectory for Baidu - the Wenxin Big Model has become a powerful engine for Baidu's growth curve. At the conference, Baidu announced that the daily usage of the Wenxin big model has reached a new high, becoming a landmark symbol of Baidu's new growth curve.
As of early November, the daily average usage of Baidu Wenxin's large model exceeded 1.5 billion, an increase of 7.5 times compared to the 200 million disclosed in May, and an increase of about 30 times compared to the first disclosure of 50 million times a year ago. Robin Lee said that "this growth rate exceeded expectations", indicating that AI is really in demand. He sighed that this steep growth curve represents the explosive application of large-scale models in China in the past two years.
Behind this data is the high recognition and trust of enterprises and developers in Baidu's big model capabilities. The Wenxin big model, with its leading functionality, usability, and practical application value, is attracting more and more enterprises to pay for it. As the competition for big models enters a landing battle, only those big models that truly meet market demand and effectively solve practical problems can continue to win the trust of customers and form a stable paid call model. The Wenxin big model has become an important support for enterprise digital upgrading due to its excellent generation ability and wide application scenarios.
For Baidu AI Cloud, the efficient application of Wenxin model has also injected new vitality into the development of Baidu's intelligent cloud. In recent years, the influence of Baidu AI Cloud in the domestic enterprise market has continued to increase, while Wenxin Model has further improved its competitiveness in AI technology implementation. At present, Baidu AI Cloud has a large model industry landing system with China's leading scale and wide coverage, enabling finance, retail, medical, manufacturing and other industries, which has promoted the smart upgrading of cross fields.
In addition to making strong efforts in the ToB market, Baidu has also demonstrated strong innovation on the C-end user and developer platforms.
Since its launch, the Wenxin Intelligent Agent Platform has attracted nearly a million developers to join and jointly build an innovative ecosystem. Here, developers can fully utilize the powerful capabilities of the Wenxin big model to achieve multi-faceted innovation from content creation, data analysis to intelligent services. For ordinary users, the Wenxin big model has also brought unprecedented application experiences in various fields such as content generation, intelligent question answering, and educational learning. At present, the number of AI users in Baidu Wenku has exceeded 230 million, which fully proves the wide application demand and huge potential of the Wenxin big model in the C-end market.
Deeply cultivated for more than ten years
Technological accumulation supports the birth of a new growth curve
Recently, renowned institution Sullivan released the report "2024 Global AI Ecological Panorama Overview", revealing the latest pattern in the global AI field. In this report, Baidu, along with Google and OpenAI, is located in the same quadrant as the AI Native Giant, highlighting its core position in the global AI ecosystem.
The reason why it stood out in this big model competition is partly due to Baidu's profound strategic vision and marathon style technological layout. As early as over a decade ago, Baidu was the first to venture into cutting-edge fields such as natural language processing and speech recognition. In 2021, Robin Lee clearly stated in his Letter to Shareholders that "in the past 10 years, we have laid the foundation and built the ecology. Today, when the tide of artificial intelligence is surging forward, Baidu has become a leading AI ecotype company."
With the continuous iteration of technology, Baidu has built a solid technical barrier with its self-developed PaddlePaddle deep learning platform, powerful supercomputing clusters and hardware resources. On a solid foundation, the big model business will become a new growth curve for Baidu in 2024.
On the one hand, through leading algorithms and model optimization techniques, Baidu has significantly reduced the training and inference costs of large models, making AI technology no longer out of reach, and allowing more enterprises to easily embrace this wave of intelligence. On the other hand, Baidu's continuous optimization of the performance and practicality of large models has gradually penetrated into the core business of enterprises. From intelligent voice assistants to efficient intelligent customer service systems, the application scenarios of large models are becoming increasingly diverse, bringing tangible benefits to enterprises. This not only makes Baidu stand out in the industry, but also brings stable and sustainable growth momentum.
In terms of talent reserves, Baidu has also demonstrated extraordinary attractiveness. The joining of top talents from 2024 Physics Nobel laureate Sinton, top AI expert Andrew Ng, and Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei undoubtedly injects strong momentum into Baidu's AI business. During his three years at Baidu, Andrew Ng not only expanded the artificial intelligence team to 1300 people, but also cultivated a large number of outstanding AI talents, laying a solid talent foundation for Baidu's sustainable development.
The first mover advantage in technology and the continuously increasing talent reserve help Baidu enrich and iterate its "big model family". As a leading provider of large models in China, Baidu has launched customized large models suitable for multiple industry scenarios. Enterprises and developers can flexibly call different types of model resources according to their actual needs. Whether it's text generation, image recognition, or video processing, Baidu's "Big Model Family" can provide users with efficient and accurate solutions. At the same time, the open and flexible calling mode not only gives users more freedom of choice, but also greatly promotes the widespread application and popularization of large model technology.
It is not difficult to see from Baidu's strategic layout that big model technology is no longer just a tool for enterprise intelligence, but also an important engine for promoting innovation in new business models. Baidu has established a wide market influence in the field of enterprise applications with its profound technological accumulation, continuously expanding large model family, and flexible calling methods.
Bet on the future
No code tools collaborate with intelligent agents to build an AI content ecosystem
At this world conference, Baidu's codeless tool "Suida" is leading a profound transformation in the way intelligent agents are developed, injecting unprecedented vitality into the field of AI applications.
Previously, Robin Lee had repeatedly talked about the judgment that "agent is the most important development direction of the big model". At this world conference, he once again said that "agent is the most mainstream form of AI applications, and will soon usher in its explosion point."
One of the opportunities for the birth of the "explosion point" may be Baidu's codeless tool "Suida" launched this time.
In the past, the development of AI applications relied heavily on advanced programming skills, which deterred some small and micro enterprises as well as non-technical developers. And Baidu's "Suida" is expected to completely break this technological barrier, making it easy for even ordinary users to get started. Even if they can't understand the code, they can quickly create and deploy their own intelligent agent applications. With the popularity of no code tools, it is not only expected to greatly shorten the development cycle of intelligent agents, but also to quickly transform developers' creative sparks into reality.
It is worth noting that "Suida" not only supports efficient construction of a single intelligent agent, but also achieves seamless collaboration between intelligent agents, building a huge network of intelligent agents. In this network, each intelligent agent can be interconnected and collaborate to weave a flexible and adaptable AI solution network.
In Baidu's chessboard, intelligent agents have become the mainstream form of AI applications, attracting countless enterprise and individual users with their low threshold and high ceiling characteristics. Low threshold means that more participants can easily enter the AI world, while high ceiling indicates unlimited potential for the development of intelligent agents. With the continuous advancement of technology, their application scenarios will continue to expand, moving from basic information services to more complex and diverse interactive fields.
For Baidu, the low threshold development model of intelligent agents provides fertile soil for the emergence of small applications and the construction of ecosystems. It not only brings rich traffic entry points to Baidu, but also enhances user stickiness and activity through precise information services. Behind the high ceiling, with the continuous evolution of AI technology, intelligent agents will constantly break through themselves, create more business opportunities and growth space, and lay a solid foundation for Baidu's competition in the AI era.
The next step after the birth of intelligent agents, in terms of intelligent agent distribution, Baidu search is undoubtedly the biggest entrance. The daily distribution volume of intelligent agents exceeds 10 million times, fully demonstrating the powerful ability of search in content distribution and traffic import.
Meanwhile, Baidu's search ecosystem not only provides efficient distribution channels for intelligent agents, but also lays a solid foundation for their subsequent commercialization. Enterprises can directly reach their target user groups through intelligent agents, achieving precise marketing and advertising placement. For example, intelligent agents, with their unique interactivity and personalized service capabilities, are gradually replacing traditional PC era corporate websites as the preferred platform for communication between businesses and consumers. Through intelligent agents, enterprises can not only effectively display product information, but also solve user problems in real time, improve user experience, and achieve a complete closed-loop from user acquisition to sales conversion.
Under the dual drive of intelligent agents and codeless tools, Baidu is gradually building an inclusive and diverse AI content ecosystem. The low threshold development mode without code tools can attract a large number of developers to flock in, injecting a continuous stream of innovative vitality into the Baidu ecosystem; The massive content of the intelligent agent ecosystem has become a solid support for search distribution and commercial conversion, further consolidating Baidu's leading position in the field of AI applications.
Through the collaborative development of intelligent agents and codeless tools, Baidu is building an open, cooperative, and win-win ecosystem, which not only promotes the widespread application and popularization of AI technology, but also opens up unlimited growth space for Baidu itself.