Baidu’s YY Live, now infused with DeepSeek, adopts YYDS name in Chinese meme-inspired joke

Live-streaming platform YY Live has launched a chatbot called YYDS in a reference to DeepSeek and a popular meme used to express admiration

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Joyy’s live-streaming YY Live, which Baidu bought for US$2 billion, has launched a DeepSeek-powered chatbot named after a Chinese meme. Photo: Captured from YY Live

Published: 6:00pm, 26 Feb 2025

Live-streaming service YY Live, now owned by Chinese internet search giant Baidu, has launched a DeepSeek-powered chatbot it is calling YYDS, capitalising on the platform’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) models with a meme-inspired name that means roughly “eternal god”.

Baidu announced on Tuesday that it acquired YY Live from Singapore-based Joyy for US$2.1 billion, a 42 per cent discount from the US$3.6 billion it was ready to pay four years ago. Following the deal, Baidu said US$1.6 billion held in escrow accounts had been released, with plans to reinvest the funds into its cloud and AI infrastructure.

Like many companies looking to capitalise on the recent popularity of DeepSeek, YY Live recently announced that it had integrated the Chinese start-up’s open-source models into its service to provide a chatbot named YYDS. In Chinese, the abbreviation is short for yongyuan de shen, an expression of extreme admiration.

The move comes after many Chinese internet service providers rushed to adopt DeepSeek’s models in recent weeks, including Baidu itself, which now uses the competing AI models in its search product. Other tech giants such as WeChat owner Tencent Holdings and e-commerce and cloud service provider Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post, have also been using DeepSeek’s tech in various products.

Users can access YYDS on both mobile and desktop, and the platform supports both DeepSeek’s V3 foundation model and the R1 reasoning model, according to the company.

Baidu is aiming to capture a share of China’s booming short video and live-streaming market, which is currently dominated by ByteDance’s Douyin – the Chinese counterpart of TikTok – and Kuaishou Technology. Alibaba also has a strong presence in live-streaming e-commerce, while WeChat is gaining traction with its in-app short video service, Channels.