When the latest Samsung flagships were revealed to be powered by Google’s Gemini models for AI, it left a lot of people intrigued. Will these features not be accessible to our fellow Chinese fans or will Samsung find a way to surprise us? Well, safe to say, the South Korean giant has indeed found a way by ditching Google and embracing Baidu AI in its Galaxy S24 series in China.
Galaxy S24 with Baidu AI
It’s common knowledge that Chinese smartphones don’t ship with Google services. Instead, Google Search is replaced by Baidu, YouTube is replaced by Youku and IQIYI, and they use Yahoo for mail, and WeChat for almost everything else. As such, there existed a replacement for every Google service to date but we weren’t quite sure about replacing Gemini—Google’s suite of small to large LLMs.
Baidu Ernie enters the Arena
Enter Ernie, Baidu’s alternative to ChatGPT. Like OpenAI’s offering, Ernie (4.0) is a chatbot but one that is ‘just as good as ChatGPT’ or “not inferior to GPT-4” according to CEO Robin Li. It’s not the only viable option in the Chinese AI space though with Tencent’s Hunyuan, and Alibaba’s Tongi Qianwen also in the play. But Samsung has decided to partner up with Baidu to bring its impressive AI features to the Chinese market.
China is getting the same AI features!
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Note Assist and Generative Edits
From what we know, features like ‘Note Assist’ and ‘Ai Edits’ will be powered by Ernie. So, just like the global variants, Chinese S24s will be able to categorize your thoughts into headings, and subheadings in the notes app. And, move things around, remove objects, and fill in the gaps in your images.
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Live Call Translation and Circle to Search
Moreover the more impressive of features like “Live Call Translation” and “Circle to Search” will supposedly work just as well. This means those in China will be able to reap the same benefits of being able to communicate without worrying too much about the language barrier and quickly finding objects they are curious about.
- If interested in learning about the AI features of the Galaxy S24 series in detail, check here.
Galaxy S24 with Baidu AI: Closing Thoughts
It’s cool to see the features making their way to China but we can’t help but wonder about the effectiveness and practicality. Will the Generative AI edit be just as good? Or will the Live Translation even be usable? All these questions pique our curiosity but we’ll find out soon enough. For now, we’ll wait and see.
- Moreover, check out our video on the key differences between MIUI and HyperOS:
