Baidu, which is often called China's answer to Google, has launched its own pair of AI-powered smart glasses at its annual World Conference event in Shanghai. The device will run on the company's ERNIE generative AI technology and was designed to "become a private assistant," according to the Financial Times. Users will reportedly be able to interact with the device using their voice and ask it questions about what it sees in their current environment. They can also tell it to play music and even track their calories consumption. And since the glasses are equipped with cameras, they can ask it to snap photos or take videos.

Baidu is putting some serious cash behind its self-driving car push after it announced a $1.5 billion fund that's focused on backing autonomous driving tech companies. The Chinese giant, best known for its internet search service and AI technology, has prioritized autonomous vehicles in a major way in recent years, so this comes as little surprise. Baidu made its Apollo self-driving car platform freely available to the auto industry earlier this year. That quickly picked up partners and it currently claims around 70, including Hyundai, Bosch, Continental, Nvidia, Microsoft Cloud, Velodyne, TomTom, UCAR and Grab. Now Baidu -- which is testing autonomous vehicles in both China and the U.S. -- is doubling down with capital via this new fund, which it said will aim to support around 100 companies over the next three years.