Li said at the event on Tuesday that its Ernie model, known as Wenxin in Chinese, handles more than 1.5 billion application programming interface (API) calls per day, several times more than the 200 million calls per day it was seeing in May, underscoring its growing popularity.
Baidu is starting to reap the benefits of AI while revenue from its more traditional online services has been falling. The company said AI-driven growth helped stabilise its financials in the second quarter, but it did not provide any details. Revenue from online ads, its main source of income, fell 2 per cent year on year to 19.2 billion yuan (US$2.7 billion).
The company is keeping its AI financials close to its chest even as it courts business for those services. The theme of the Baidu World 2024 conference is “applications are here”, highlighting the ways in which its AI has been deployed across more than 100 industries, from education to manufacturing.
Li emphasised the role of AI agents, which he referred to as “carriers for content, information, and services in the AI-native era”. For instance, Baidu’s enterprise-facing AI agent Qiaocang, which was on display at the venue, enables businesses to create customised agents. These AI agents can serve as customer service bots and sales assistants, helping to boost conversion rates and analyse customer demographics.
Baidu’s Qianfan, another platform, has helped corporate clients train 33,000 AI models and develop 770,000 applications, Li said.
