First users and then customers Let AI truly realize the positive cycle of business

The landing of the scene has always been the "number one" proposition in the AI chip industry.

AI chip companies have risen in large numbers since 2015, and after several years of market hammering, the camp has gradually differentiated: on the one hand, the news of "water reversal" is endless, department layoffs, business adjustments, tape-out failures, and listing difficulties; on the other hand, some AI chip companies have repeatedly raised funds, products continue to be iteratively upgraded, and landing continues to usher in new increments.

What exactly causes the "advance" and "retreat" of AI chip synchronization? Interpreting the "watershed" behind this may refer to the core and logic of how to make AI land.

It is difficult to land, and the difficulty lies in the user experience

Lu Yong, CEO of Exploration Technology, believes that in theory, AI is "omnipotent" in terms of speech and image recognition, but as a startup, we must calm down and think about whether this solution is just needed for users to send charcoal in the snow, or the icing on the cake.

Taking the smart home field as an example, this concept has been placed high hopes since its birth, and more than a decade has passed, the market share is still extremely low, and the stickiness of the product is far less than initially expected.

What's the problem?

Thinking from the user's side, this problem is well understood. Since the development of AI voice capabilities requires the assistance of cloud computing power, many people in the industry naturally think that going to the cloud is the only direction of intelligence. However, the operation of intelligent products connected to the cloud is cumbersome, and to meet the hard requirements of Wi-Fi networking, it is also necessary to download APP, register, set, connect third-party central control and other operations.

"From the user's point of view, this is not humane enough, I turn on a light or air conditioner, but also have to think about the network conditions, and then make various settings." This scared off many users, and they did not dare to invite such a 'tall' smart product home. Lu Yong believes that even if the smart home is cool in function, it is still essentially a household appliance.

In the consumer group of smart home appliances, only a very small number of users are interested in advanced technology, can skillfully configure the network, and are willing to invest a lot of time in the product, this type of user can be called geek users. But in fact, such users only account for a small part of the entire consumer group, and the vast majority of ordinary users do not have such IT capabilities.

When a new technology appears, the most afraid of falling into the "cognitive bias", the design of the product will be their own technical ability to substitute, of course, all people should understand, such an engineer thinking, usually make a large and complete product, but the use of the threshold is extremely high, this seems to be the curse of knowledge, so that high technology has become a natural shield, abandoning the most frequent frequency users.

Users dare not buy, users will not use, these two mountains seriously affect the consumer experience, want to open the door of AI applications, you must break the ice of the customer's inertial thinking.

End-sidedism of exploration

In Lu Yong's view, only home appliances themselves have AI capabilities, do not rely on third-party devices, and can achieve human-computer interaction without complex settings, which is the real "intelligence of the people".

Looking back at the historical technological evolution route, it will be found that computing power first released personal PCs from large computer rooms, and then from computers to mobile phones, all computing power evolved from the initial centralized to the final performance. In the ERA of AI, all computing power is concentrated in the cloud, which is contrary to market value.

The advantage of end-side voice is that consumers do not need to allocate the network, do not need central control or gateway equipment, plug-in can be used, stand-alone can achieve intelligence, which greatly reduces the user's learning threshold and use threshold. In addition, as users pay more attention to privacy, personal data privacy has also become a consideration for users in the purchase and use of smart homes.

Henry Ford once said: "If I initially asked consumers what they wanted, they would tell me 'want a faster horse!'" But when a user drives a car, the world's fastest horse can't be seen. —— When the user truly appreciates the feeling of offline voice control YYDS, the manual operation will not be "waited for".

This is equivalent to the cultivation of a user's habit, just like the last mile mentioned in the express delivery industry, for smart home voice applications, it is the last centimeter of distance.

Cultivation has always been a matter of knowing easier than doing, and exploring the situation to open up the situation does not rely on simple preaching, but on a real package of high-dimensional systematic services.

"Exploring the VUI must first achieve users, and then achieve customers." Lu Yong said with deep feeling.

In the past, most chip manufacturers only provided chips that meet customer PPA indicators, and then the upper layer was to provide Total Solution, and the higher layer was to open the SDK interface, but around the AI voice chip, the exploration not only provided a complete set of solutions including chips and algorithms and SDK interfaces, but also further "upgraded dimensionality" thinking, and further considered how to improve the user experience, and superimposed on the top level to consider how to achieve customer value.

This is because for the direction and scope of AI applications, many B-end customers have not thought clearly, but just follow the trend. Some companies tend to customize the route on demand, and what needs are proposed by home appliance customers or solution providers, they will first do it according to the cat. Exploration chose another dimension of "tactical forward", not from the industrial end, but from the user side, from the user's point of view, to refine and improve the program.

In the more specific home appliances landing, the exploration of the choice from the lamps, air conditioning, fans and other environmental control of the home appliances to start, into the whole category of home appliances program, Lu Yong explained: environmental products, users for the intelligence of the personal feeling is the most intense, light and shade changes, or air hot and cold changes, is derived from the bottom survival needs, is the most just needed products, and the frequency of use is extremely high, but also easy to develop habits of use.

"After paving the way in previous years, it is currently some industry leaders who are actively promoting the landing of offline voice, because the value we create is passed on to customers, and customers also recognize the deep logic of value, under this change, the smart home industry will accept offline voice as an important function point in 2022, and will usher in a major change." Lu Yong concluded.

The new kernel of end-side intelligence opens up a new blue ocean

Smart homes may be a large market after smartphones. Lu Yong analyzed that there are about 5 to 1 billion home appliances, about 150 million air conditioners per year, 80 million television sets, 300 million lighting fixtures, and then about 300 million to 500 million small household appliances, which is a huge market base.

Once the door of the end-side voice market is opened, it will usher in a massive new blue ocean market.

Lu Yong analyzed this judgment from several aspects of the change: First, more and more users began to use voice interaction instead of remote control, and the market demand for low-power end-side voice interaction functions grew rapidly.

The second is the field of smart home, from lamps and lanterns, to ice washing, to small household appliances, white electricity and other use scenarios, these areas are going hand in hand.

Third, at first, only the big factories tested the voice AI function, and it was used for some fist high-end products to explore the market. However, since last year, the speed of voice intelligence of low-end products has accelerated, and even some small and medium-sized brands and even white-label products have taken the initiative to find differentiation in the direction of voice AI experience in order to compete with large brands and differentiate.

Lu Yong judged that the penetration of intelligent voice will start with a device with a remote control, followed by a terminal device with touch and buttons.

Thus the fission effect arises.

"When a customer puts on a product, he will find that the market feedback is very good, and he will go to more categories and produce internal fission; then there is external fission, a large customer or industry dark horse uses end-side voice, and other customers in the industry will catch up." After four years of tempering, Exploration Technology has ushered in a new harvest period.

According to Lu Yong, in 2021, Exploration released the second generation of voice chips, including VOI311 (lightweight version), VOI621 (upgraded version) and VOI721 (enhanced version) three chips. As soon as it was listed, there were many customers who placed orders one after another, and a number of large customers took the initiative to find a country to sign a strategic cooperation agreement, hoping to ensure supply.

The journey ahead

After experiencing the test of the market, the next step of exploration is more stable and far-reaching.

Lu Yong mentioned that the follow-up of the exploration will continue to optimize in the field of products and algorithms. The first is the product iteration at the chip level, and the second is the continuous deepening of the cultivation at the algorithm level to introduce a better and more cost-effective voice solution.

At the landing level, the 2022 exploration will focus on increasing the penetration rate in the existing smart home field and opening up some new areas such as the wearable market. "Last year was a good start, and this year will be an order of magnitude improvement on this basis."

Before Apple did not launch touchscreen-based smartphones, everyone felt like chicken ribs for touch screens, but after the launch of Apple's touchscreen mobile phones, basically all smartphones are now based on touch screens. Perhaps, the future offline voice appliances will also go out of a similar path. The continuous exploration of this field has obviously gradually fullened its wings and maintained a vigorous growth force. Everything is due to the original intention and persistence, but also to the strength and insight.