Advertisement
Artificial intelligence
TechBig Tech

China’s AI giants cosy up to virtual companions as loneliness drives chatbot revenue

  • Microsoft spin-off Xiaoice remains the market leader, but Baidu, Tencent and ByteDance are all looking to capitalise on the latest Chinese AI trend

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
Microsoft’s Xiaoice chatbot has been popular in China for years, eventually spinning off into a separate company in 2020. Its X Eva app has become China’s most popular virtual companion service. Photo: Microsoft
Coco Fengin Beijing
Chinese technology giants Baidu, Tencent Holdings and ByteDance are rushing to join a trend of using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to create virtual companions for the country’s lonely hearted.
The companies have each built their own answer to established foreign apps like Character.ai and Replika. Last year, Baidu launched Xiaokan Planet and Tencent’s online literature arm China Literature rolled out Zhumengdao. TikTok owner ByteDance released its Maoxiang app in March.

The concept behind each of these products is roughly the same: they generate humanlike responses to user queries with unique personalities, allowing people to have a digital friend who will respond to them at any time. Maoxiang and Zhumengdao allow users to customise the look, voice and personalities of their virtual friends, while Xiaokan Planet only offers two characters.

ByteDance’s Maoxiang is growing rapidly, becoming the third-largest virtual companion app in China for the month of May by number of downloads after launching in March. Photo: Screenshot of Maoxiang
ByteDance’s Maoxiang is growing rapidly, becoming the third-largest virtual companion app in China for the month of May by number of downloads after launching in March. Photo: Screenshot of Maoxiang

As with tech firms around the world, Chinese companies have been scrambling to find out where consumers get the most value from GenAI – which has been a hot trend since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022 – with content generation, search and virtual friends all being popular use cases.

“Among all consumer AI apps, the AI companion ones seem to be the hottest with the clearest revenue source at the moment,” Liu Mengyuan, an analyst at market researcher QbitAI, wrote in a blog post last week.

The apps are free to use with basic features, but paid subscriptions are required for things like faster response times. Some apps allow users to sell their virtual characters once developed.

“While AI focuses on improving efficiency and completing tasks … AI [companions] are able to connect with the user on an emotional level that goes far beyond the traditional boundaries of functionality,” Super Huang, a Beijing-based product manager-turned-influencer who writes about AI, said in a blog post.

Advertisement