The iPhone 16 has been completely changed!
Dark Horse never imagined in his life that the permutations and combinations of "Apple" + "Baidu AI" would one day appear on his homepage. According to insiders, Baidu may provide AI capabilities for Apple's upcoming iPhone 16, Mac system and iOS 18 this year.
Last week, the "time management master" Cook came to China for a round of "special forces":
On the 20th, I first went to visit director Lu Wei and Papergames, and then went to meet BYD Wang Chuanfu of Fruit Chain, Zhou Qunfei of Lens Technology, and Chen Xiaoshuo of Changying Secret;
On the 21st, I went to Shanghai Jiaotong University, followed by the Apple Jing'an store;
On the 22nd, he met with Wang Wentao, Minister of Commerce;
On the morning of the 23rd, I met with the CTO of Dewu in Shanghai, and in the afternoon, I went to the Beijing Sanlitun store to meet the NetEase designer;
On the 24th, I also went to the China Development Forum......
Source: Internet
Dark Horse has always thought that this is Cook's limit, and then this Monday came out to determine the news that "Apple and Baidu have reached a cooperation", according to Dark Horse, the Wall Street Journal reported on the 22nd that it was mentioned that "Apple and Baidu preliminary negotiations".
In other words, Cook also took the time to cooperate with Baidu during his "special forces trip" to China, which traveled thousands of miles a day?
What's even more interesting is that Apple reported that it had negotiated with Ali and another domestic large-scale model company, and finally decided that Baidu would provide this service.
It's not that the dark horse is biased, I believe that the majority of netizens must have the same doubts as the dark horse-
Apple, why did you choose Baidu?
A word from Wen Xin in the bloody rain
When it comes to Baidu AI, its culmination should be Wenxin Yiyan, a large model launched by Baidu in March last year.
Wenxin Yiyan, as the first warrior to fight Chat GPT in the domestic model, has a good or bad reputation, but it can almost be said to be a "household name" in China.
I don't know if it's Chat GPT that is menacing, Baidu is rushing to break the jar with the name of "the first domestic one" or what, when Baidu just launched Wenxin Yiyan in March last year, Jianghu people called it Chat PPT;
Because at the press conference, Robin Li finished the whole process in front of a slide show prepared in advance, and then the user interface of Wenxin Yiyan directly lined up in a million-long line.
After that, various large manufacturers such as: Ali's Tongyi Qianwen, Huawei's Pangu model, Tencent hybrid model, Douyin bean bag, iFLYTEK Xinghuo, Zhipu AI have begun to exert their efforts, and bloggers on the market who do horizontal comparison of large models have been stubble after stubble, but in most cases, Wenxin Yiyan is the one who chases ducks, and his performance is lackluster in terms of information understanding, expression logic, and interaction.
Source: Station B up main Neolithic Park (Wenxin Yiyan 3.5 and other domestic AI large models score comparison)
And with the continuous update of the Wenxin Yiyan version, to the latest Wenxin Yiyan free version 3.5 and paid version 4.0, the difference in the wind reviews in the application market is also getting bigger and bigger.
Source: Zhihu
Almost every comment that discusses Wenxin Yiyan will appear in a mysterious group that makes a statement like "Then you must have never used 4.0".
Source: Station B
And the paid version 4.0 and the free version 3.5 are almost completely different from each other, making netizens ridicule: It's not that Baidu can't make good products, but mainly depends on how much you can pay (paid).
What's more interesting is that at the beginning of March, Robin Li published a statement that "the gap between Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan and OpenAl may be about two months", and Wang Xiaochuan, CEO of Baichuan Intelligence, heard about it and said directly: "This must be what Robin Li said in the parallel universe, not in our world." ”
Of course, jokes are jokes, Robin Li's self-confidence also shows BaiduAI's strong strength in learning and iteration, in fact, after the dark horse went into battle in person, Wenxin Yiyan 4.0 did correct a lot of bugs that were previously released by evaluation bloggers, but its high price and the payment needs of these "AI families" have made the experience drop again and again.
In addition to the performance of the large model itself, Baidu has also reached cooperation with Samsung, Honor and other mobile phone manufacturers.
In the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, the overseas version uses Google Gemini, and the Bank of China uses domestic AI such as Baidu Wenxin Yiyan, which realizes functions including instant circle search, AI retouching, real-time two-way translation, and global summarization.
Source: Station B
However, the dark horse found in the user evaluation of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra that because the mobile phone of the National Bank is equipped with Baidu AI, it once became a lightning protection point for some users. (I don't know if it's a stereotype)
Source: Ku'an
Things have developed to this point, Dark Horse dared to interview several in-depth Apple users around him, "What do you think of the cooperation between Apple Bank and Baidu?" The feedback I got was almost the same: Then I'd better use the American version/This 16 is not a must.
Tsk, Baidu, how can you do it?
The dark horse also did a small investigation:
I'm sorry, but please log in to vote on your mobile WeChat
If the iPhone 16 is equipped with Baidu's AI model, will you still change the 16? Single selection
My beauty pageant version/Hong Kong version
My iPhone can fight for another ten years!
Domestic real fragrance
I want to experience Baidu AI
Apple "survives" for compliance?
In business, there must be a reason why Apple chose Baidu, and the dark horse went to pick up the current news, and probably summarized several reasons:
First and foremost, compliance reasons.
Just like Samsung, even if it has launched a Gaussian model, it must abide by Chinese rules when entering the Chinese market, and at present, Apple's overseas partner chooses Google Gemini, but it must not be used in China, so Apple has found a "stand-in" in China.
Baidu's existence is equivalent to a "bridge", and cooperation is reached through open API interfaces, similar to Baidu providing AI large model services to Apple, and then billing for thousands of times.
In the end, the biggest reason why Apple chose Baidu among many domestic manufacturers such as Ali and Baidu may be that Baidu has a huge user scale in China and almost full coverage of application scenarios.
According to Baidu's data, as of the end of December 2023, Wenxin Yiyan has more than 100 million users, with a total of 3.7 billion words of text creation and 300 million lines of code, and the daily call volume of Wenxin's large model has exceeded 50 million, an increase of 190% quarter-on-quarter, in addition, Baidu PaddlePaddle has 10.7 million developers, and 860,000 models have been created on PaddlePaddle, serving 235,000 enterprises and institutions.
Looking at Baidu's AI product matrix, in addition to the first Wenxin Yiyan, Baidu is also involved in AI search, AI e-commerce, AI social networking, intelligent driving, and MaaS services for the B-end.
You just say that the partners choose this kind of full-stack, is it fragrant?
Source: Internet
In addition, the dark horse guessed, Apple's old rival Samsung also chose Baidu.
Just like you and you are at the same table as the first or second in the class, you two will definitely stare at each other's things every day, for fear that the other party will step on your head one day, at this time the opposite side of the cram school, you must also apply for one, but you are afraid that the cram school you apply for is not as good as the other party, in order not to make a mistake, you will apply for the same cram school.
Therefore, the reason why Apple chose Baidu is also very simple, Baidu has experience in cooperating with other mobile phone manufacturers, especially the products that have been put on the market in cooperation with Samsung, and Baidu is a "safe" choice for Apple.
Source: Samsung
Another noteworthy point is that Apple previously announced that it would give up making cars All in AI, and artificial intelligence is bound to be the main direction of Apple's future development, so on Apple's most important product iPhone, it is difficult for Dark Horse to imagine that Apple will give up the huge cake of mobile phone AI.
Therefore, the dark horse boldly opened the microphone: the cooperation between Apple and Baidu is likely to be only a phased cooperation.
In March this year, Apple published a paper announcing its MM1 polymorphic large language model, which is divided into three parameter scales, the largest of which has 30 billion parameters.
Cook announced that iOS18 will embody Apple's generative AI technology (Image source: Apple's official website)
A few days ago, Cook said in an interview: "Apple's generative AI, there will be news announcements later this year". In other words, Apple's own AI is still in the pot.
Moreover, Apple may prefer to run AI locally rather than the "cloud AI" approach of most competitors, which can not only respond quickly, but also protect user data and privacy. Therefore, this time, the iPhone 16 is seeking external API access cooperation between Google and Baidu, and it is likely to focus on its own local generative AI technology.
Of course, the above is purely the personal opinion of the dark horse.
Write at the end
For Baidu, compared with Apple's mature application ecology, its own AI applications do have a lot of room for growth, and at the same time, the domestic large model is rolling all over the world, Wenxin Yiyan has also lost its leading position in the market, and urgently needs a strong ally to empower itself, at least this cooperation, for Baidu is a sure deal.
But for Apple users, this is probably a "tragic experience downgrade", users who are accustomed to Apple's Siri, Apple music, health, Keynote, Maps and other ecosystems were suddenly told to carry the domestic Baidu AI that "does nothing well"......
But based on the previous cooperation between Baidu and Samsung, the "marriage" between Apple and Baidu has most likely fallen under the gavel, and what is the follow-up progress, whether Baidu can catch this "pouring wealth and wealth", it depends on whether it can support it.
A paragraph:
User: Siri, help me generate a picture
Siri: Good master,The low-definition version has been generated for you,HD version, please choose to pay 0.98 yuan once,Or open a membership to get
(The above is purely a joke, if there is any similarity, the dark horse is exempt)
Leave a message in the comment area to share, if the Apple mobile phone is equipped with Baidu AI, will you still buy it?