AI in China

Chinese internet and technology giants have shown great interest in AI in recent years.

Baidu

The Baidu online search engine has been investing billions of US dollars annually in AI technology. Its achievements have been listed among the 10 Breakthrough Technologies chosen by MIT Technology Review for two consecutive years.

Baidu has an advantage especially in voice and image recognition, with recognition rates sitting only just below 100%.

Its AI 'Baidu Brain' beat a human candidate in voice and image recognition in one episode of the Chinese version of the scientific reality and talent show, 'The Brain,' where human candidates are chosen for their exceptional brainpower. The show was broadcast on January 6 this year.

The current focus of Baidu's AI research is on self-driving vehicles, according to Baidu's CEO Robin Li.

Alibaba

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has launched 'City Brain,' an artificial intelligence hub which uses big data to help build smart cities.

The core of 'City Brain' uses the ET artificial intelligence technology of Ali cloud, which can conduct overall real-time analysis of a city, automatically deploy public resources, and amend defects in urban operations.

Tencent

Tencent is relatively new in the AI area. It established its AI Lab in 2016, with 4 main research fields of machine learning, natural language processing, voice recognition and computer vision.

Tencent's AI research is expected to integrate with the development of its social media software such as WeChat and QQ to make them more user-friendly.

encent beat Linkface, Face++, Facebook and Google in LFW (Labeled Faces in the Wild) Face Database last June, with a record face recognition rate of 99.65%.