Samsung’s first AI-powered smartphone will run on Ernie Bot in China, which was developed by the Chinese tech giant Baidu as its answer to ChatGPT.
The South Korean electronics company announced that its latest flagship smartphone will be powered by Baidu’s Ernie model in China as it seeks to carve out a larger share in the country’s oversaturated phone market.
Ernie integration will allow users to translate calls in real-time, summarize lengthy conversations, and offer advanced typesetting, among other features, according to Chinese media reports.
The new Samsung model will start selling at 5,499 yuan, or $766, the state-run China Daily reported.
Samsung is currently not in the top five phone brands in China, where Apple just posted a record year and led the market with a 17.3% share in 2023, according to the latest data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Apple was followed by Chinese phone makers Honor, Vivo, Huawei, and Oppo. In announcing the “strategic partnership” with Baidu, Samsung may be hoping to improve its market position. The partnership is also a way for Baidu to expand its AI business.
Outside China, the Samsung Galaxy S24 lineup is powered by Google’s AI model Gemini, which is blocked in China along with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other Western chatbots.
Baidu released Ernie Bot in March and later claimed it outperformed ChatGPT in several “key” areas. Other Chinese tech companies, including Tencent and Alibaba, followed suit and released their own AI products.
TikTok parent ByteDance is the latest to join the AI race, outlining its own large language model called LEGO in a paper earlier this month. The company faced backlash over allegations that it used OpenAI’s technology to build its own model.
