China’s AI industry is gearing up for what may be its most pivotal week of the year, marked by flashy promotions and consumer giveaways.
The country’s tech giants, including Alibaba, Baidu, and ByteDance, plan to release the newest versions of their flagship AI models around the Lunar New Year holiday, and are spending big to attract users, offering milk tea vouchers, cash handouts, and even robots.
While the three have long competed to dominate the internet space, from e-commerce to short videos, the fight over AI market dominance is more like the “‘Battle of Midway’ — a turning point in the bigger war,” a Chinese tech analyst wrote: “Once lost, they might lose the entire future.”