BEIJING, April 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese AI giant Baidu on Thursday announced plans to deepen partnership with China Telecom to cooperate in fields such as 5G, smart homes, intelligent clouding services and intelligent driving.

As part of the comprehensive strategic partnership, the application of Baidu's smart speaker technology and products will be promoted to introduce intelligent gadgets and services to more Chinese families, according to Baidu.

Baidu and China Telecom are working together on edge computing, a core 5G technology, and will explore edge computing platform services and AI research and development.

The two parties will also leverage their strengths in 5G presence and autonomous driving capabilities for commercial use of driverless technologies.

Baidu CEO Robin Li expects the enhanced partnership to not only speed up industrial upgrading, but also create more AI-based telecom application scenarios.