Samsung Electronics will feature Baidu’s Ernie Bot as a key attraction of its new Galaxy S24 smartphone series in China.
The South Korean maker has pitched its latest handset family as the first of a wave of AI smartphones, and Baidu’s artificial intelligence tools will help with text summarization, organization and translation, Baidu said in a statement. It will also provide the backend support for Samsung’s “circle to search” feature, which is handled by Alphabet’s Google in other markets.
Google’s Android software provides the backbone for the majority of smartphones in China, but the company’s add-on mobile services and app store are not available, leaving it to local companies to fill gaps with alternatives like Tencent Holdings’s WeChat.
For Baidu, the Samsung deal marks a major adopter of its Ernie AI, one of the earliest and best efforts to create a Chinese challenger to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Samsung’s market share has crumbled in the world’s largest smartphone arena in past years to roughly 1-2 percent, crowded out by Apple’s iPhones as well as local brands from Xiaomi to Huawei Technologies. Showcasing Ernie prominently might appeal to its millions of existing users, as the Korean company safeguards its global presence and tries to pioneer a new mainstream category with foldables.
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