Duer to help Baidu get voice heard by its peers

Robin Li, chief executive officer of the Beijing-based company, unveiled the artificial intelligence-powered Duer at the 2015 Baidu World Conference in Beijing, China, Sept 8, 2015. [Phot provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Baidu Inc, the online search giant, launched its own Siri-like virtual assistant on Tuesday which is able, for instance, to place takeout orders.

Robin Li, chief executive officer of the Beijing-based company, unveiled the artificial intelligence-powered Duer at the company's annual technology event, Baidu World.

Demonstrating Duer's abilities, Li asked the virtual assistant to search for a nice restaurant in the Gulou area in Beijing, with the condition that it must allow pets.

Duer smoothly processed Li's voice request, recommended him a restaurant, and helped make the reservation.

Li said compared with pure information searches, a search for services is often based on specific criteria and sometimes complicated interaction.

"That's why we wanted to launch an artificial intelligence-powered assistant, to match search requests with high-quality services," he said.

Duer's launch ties in closely with Baidu's 20 billion yuan ($3.14 billion) investment, announced in June, in online-to-offline services over the next three years, which will transform the search giant from being simply a platform to connect people with information, to linking people with services.

The virtual assistant's arrival is seen by analysts as a vital step in that process, which Baidu hopes will create a new growth point for the company in the highly competitive mobile Internet market.

Tian Hou, from Beijing-based firm TH Capital, said as the Internet becomes more reliant on mobile devices, Baidu needs new innovations and new strategies to remain competitive.

"As we all know, being a gateway generates a lot of visitors and traffic, and therefore money.