Baidu (BIDU, Financial) overhauls its search engine with AI-driven features and voice search support, aiming to turn its mobile app into a chatbot-style assistant.
The update, revealed at a Beijing event, shifts the focus from keyword queries to natural language interactions, letting users draft text, generate images and plan trips through conversational prompts.
Mobile searches will also support voice input across multiple Chinese dialects, a move designed to simplify the experience and differentiate Baidu from social rivals like ByteDance's Douyin and emerging AI browsers.
Baidu's online marketing revenue has slid for four straight quarters, and executives believe AI-generated content will eventually drive ad spending back up.
At the same event, Baidu unveiled an image-to-video model to help marketers create social-feed videos and open-sourced its Ernie 4.5 AI family to spur developer engagement. The company also highlighted its self-built P800 Kunlun chips and new Ernie X1 Turbo reasoning model, touting cost-efficient performance on par with peers.
Why It Matters: As user attention fragments across apps and AI tools, Baidu's pivot to conversational search and content generation could reignite growth in China's fiercely competitive digital ad market.
Investors will watch upcoming quarterly revenues and any uptick in ad monetization linked to these AI features when Baidu reports earnings later this month.
