Samsung Electronics is set to launch its new Galaxy S24 series in China, featuring “Erniebot,” an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Baidu as a response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
According to foreign media reports on Jan. 29 (local time), Baidu announced that Samsung Electronics will utilize Baidu’s AI technology in its first AI smartphone, which supports tasks such as sentence summarization, composition, and translation.
Baidu also emphasized that they are supporting the Circle to Search feature, which Samsung Electronics collaborated on with Alphabet’s Google outside China. This feature enables AI to provide search results by drawing a circle around an object of interest on the screen while browsing the web, social media (SNS), or YouTube.
Bloomberg explained that while Google’s Android software is widely used as the operating system (OS) for most smartphones in China, Google’s add-on mobile services and app store are unavailable in the country. Therefore, local companies like Tencent’s WeChat are filling the gap.
Baidu anticipates that this collaboration with Samsung Electronics will be an opportunity for its AI chatbot to be effectively utilized.
Although China is the world’s largest smartphone market, Samsung Electronics’ market share has recently dropped to about 1-2%, overshadowed by local brands including Apple’s iPhone, Xiaomi, and Huawei. Samsung Electronics hopes to capture consumer interest by prominently featuring Baidu’s Erniebot and aims to consolidate its unique position in the premium segment with foldable smartphones in the Chinese market.