Reporter | Li Huilin Editor| Xia Chong
In a creative park in Zhuhai, the reporter met Zhou Zean, who had just finished the meeting. Like many entrepreneurs who majored in computer science, he dressed casually and approachably. But when it comes to his own products, he always talks endlessly and his eyes shine.
Zhou Zean has served as a development engineer and product director of Kingsoft office engine, and resigned in 2020 to start a business and established Bio-U Technology.
This is a smart writing SDK (Software Development Kit) service platform, the core services include smart writing, smart typography, smart graphics and so on. In November 2021, Bio Technology obtained angel round financing from the "old owner" Kingsoft Office.
From the perspective of the industry, AI writing is not a new thing, and the information and news manuscript writing of media organizations has been deeply involved in AI.
Zhou Zean mentioned that 2016 should be the most lively time for intelligent writing, and the attention of the industry has dropped again after 2017.
Zean Zhou, CEO of BioPower
"Everyone's expectations for intelligent writing are too high, and the technical level at that time cannot support product demand, resulting in most of the products being biased towards pan-writing, not poking at user pain points, and user value or commercial value are not tapped." Zhou Zean said in an exclusive interview with the "21CBR" reporter.
In his view, now that technological development has been able to support the value realization of specific scenarios, the industry has begun to do scenario-based exchanges.
Under the new changes, how will the industry rookie Biyou Technology open up its own world?
01
Second entrepreneurship, resume cut in
Bio-Tech is Zhou Ze'an's second venture. In 2015, he created a PPT animation plug-in product "Pocket Animation", and after being acquired by Kingsoft in 2017, he entered kingsoft office and led the incubation and commercialization of a smart document project.
It was during this time that he discovered the commercial value of AI in content creation. Later, with the listing of Kingsoft office and the adjustment of organizational structure, Zhou Zean was transferred to other projects. The original smart document project failed to continue to promote commercial iteration, which made him feel a bit of a pity.
Zhou Zean said that the intelligent writing sector covers 5 major areas, media information, financial reports, marketing copywriting, office writing, human resources, can be called "primary market", its domestic market size has approached 17 million US dollars, in the past two years, there have also been short video scripts, scripts and other "secondary market".
"AI writing is valuable and more marketable. I come from a technical background and would like to do some cutting-edge technology-driven products. Zhou Zean, who is optimistic about the huge market space of intelligent writing, decided to start a business again.
Most of the core members of the team of BIO Technology are from Pocket Animation and WPS. In order to save money, Zhou Zean rented a private house as an office with his team and immersed himself in research and development.
In order to avoid the "old road" of pan-writing in the past, the idea of Biyou Technology is to do "scenario-based intelligent writing": first build a scenario-based generation algorithm model, and then cut into specific scenarios to verify AI writing ability.
The resume is the first application scenario chosen by BIO Technology.
"The core of the content of the resume is whether it can represent the ability of the job seeker and whether it matches the requirements of the enterprise." In Zhou Zean's view, resume writing has higher requirements for content, and the market is relatively mature, with great commercial value.
For most people, the first step in writing a job resume is to find a template reference and then fill in your own content. For BIO Technology, the first step also needs to start from the template. But the difference is that through a large number of AI training, BIO Technology can generate a large number of templates with content in real time, and the cost is also very low.
In March this year, after the release of the resume template platform, IT began the research and development of an AI online editor, and 3 months later, it developed a resume editor with AI-assisted writing functions. In September this year, BIO Technology launched the product to the C-end market with the "YOO Resume" brand, and has accumulated the first batch of users.
Zhou Zean introduced that for a certain intentional position, in the process of writing resumes, AI will guide users to complete the content of their resumes according to the core content and information that enterprises pay attention to.
After the basic information is completed, the AI will refine the key information again and do content editing, such as converting the colloquial content into professional expression, professional terminology expression, and adding quantitative indicators, etc., so as to enhance the value of resume content and help job seekers deliver more effectively.
02
Focus on the B-side and charge by the time
Within BIYOU Technology, "YOO resume" is a product used to verify the C-end users and commercial value, which is not currently commercially promoted, and Zhou Zean's expectations for its commercialization are not high.
"For the C-side, I hope to let users use it multiple times and use it well, bring product convenience to users, and also learn how to upgrade the algorithm through user feedback, optimize the product experience, and improve the service capabilities of the B-side."
He said that Bio Technology is positioned as a technology-enabled enterprise, facing B-end enterprise customers. At present, the company has provided resume-related AI services to Kingsoft Office and Aiwen Office.
The key to the FACT that YOO resumes can achieve AI supplementary writing lies in the Wernicke Core Engine, the underlying intelligent writing engine developed by BIO Technology, which is mainly generated based on the deep learning model WCCG (Wernicke Control Content Generate) developed by the company.
In medicine, the Wernicke region refers to the area of the central nervous system of the brain that governs language understanding and expression. Bio Technology takes this as the name of the intelligent writing engine, hoping that the content expressed by AI can conform to the scene and generate value.
The Wernick framework consists of a two-tier application funnel architecture that has the advantage of high replication capabilities. At present, in addition to resume writing, there must be technology that has expanded its application scenarios to the fields of official document writing, human resources, medical science popularization, graphic typesetting and so on.
According to reports, it took 13 months for Biyou Technology to build a resume application scenario, but when it recently cut into the medical science popularization scene, the time was shortened to 2 and a half weeks.
Zhou Zean believes that as the technology matures further, it can even take a few hours to generate a set of applications in certain scenarios.
In terms of business model, Biyou Technology pays enterprises per time, and for B-end enterprises, the cost of use per time is very low.
For example, the cost of purchasing a resume in the market is about 50-100 yuan, and after using the resume generation technology of BioYou Technology, it is only about 1 yuan to generate an original resume template.
Doing medical science knowledge is also similar, according to the traditional way to find a professional doctor to write script content, each cost of about 6-10 yuan. After adopting AI co-writing, you only need to find a general doctor to do content review, and the cost is reduced to 1 yuan / article.
The efficiency has also been greatly improved, "the previous 100,000 pieces of popular science content, doctors may have to write for two months, AI can be generated overnight." Zhou Zean gave an example.
03
Feel the rocks across the river, the fittest survive
Zhou Zean stressed that Biyou Technology does not want to replace people as an intelligent writing platform, but to help solve some low-quality and repetitive work so that people can release creativity.
From the outside world, the development process of Biyou Technology seems to be smooth sailing, but in fact, it has also encountered practical challenges.
First, technically. When the intelligent writing engine was first developed, Zhou Zean and the team did not have a reference object, and could only constantly change the processing mode, feel the stones and cross the river, and studied for a year to form the prototype of the product.
At that time, due to the shortage of manpower and the long research and development cycle, the team faced great contradictions: on the one hand, it wanted to quickly verify the value of AI writing through the product as soon as possible and obtain user feedback; on the other hand, the technology needed time to precipitate, and it could not support product expectations in a short period of time, and even the user's perception of AI was very weak, and it was difficult to quantify the value.
For example, when making a resume editor, "the biggest difficulty is to AI-educate the products or functions that the public recognizes." Resumes are a very popular product, and everyone mentions that it is a search template resource. At the beginning, we have been trying to use copywriting to emphasize that it is generated intelligently, but in fact, many people do not feel it. ”
Later, Zhou Zean and the team came up with a way: to let users participate in functional decisions. That is, in the user writing process, more opportunities for them to make decisions are deliberately added, including guiding users through various steps to guide users how to write next, so as to strengthen the existence and role of AI.
Second, the greater pressure lies in funding. The research and development cost of AI is relatively large, the initial start-up capital is limited, and the investment node that was originally confirmed very early on cannot arrive because of the relatively complex delivery process.
It is not easy to start a business, and it is even more difficult to break new ground. During the period, the capital chain of Biyou Technology was almost broken, and in desperation, Zhou Zean persisted in raising friends and bank loans. Nowadays, BioPower has officially launched commercial verification, and has new customers and directions.
For future planning, BIYOU Technology will continue to conduct in-depth commercial verification around existing application scenarios, and it is expected to spend three years to achieve full coverage of five "primary market" scenarios and accelerate commercial exploration.
Zhou Zean said that the vision of Bio-U Technology is to become China's largest, enterprise-oriented intelligent writing application platform. The goal is very far, the market is very large, and the road of Biyou Technology has just begun.