Like Google, Baidu's core service is also search – Baidu is said to account for 75% of search traffic in its homeland. Here, it has rolled out machine learning algorithms for voice and image recognition, as well as natural language processing, to help it return smarter, more useful and more personalized results. Baidu also makes its technology available to third parties such as other companies which want to benefit from the AI revolution but don't have the resources to develop their own algorithms and applications. Much of its software and systems have been made open source and it also provides access to its technology on an "as-a-service" basis. Businesses and organizations can use Baidu's systems to host their own data and run their own analytics projects in the cloud, paying only for the storage and computing resources which they use.

Baidu is currently considered to be pack leader amongst the Chinese internet giants as they race to develop and deploy machine and deep learning technology. Much like their US-based counterparts such as Google and Amazon, self-teaching, neural net technology is being integrated into both their core services and used to innovate in new ways. Cutting edge artificial intelligence (AI) methods such as machine learning and deep learning are being used to reap huge benefits across industries as diverse as finance and healthcare. The basic idea is that once we teach computers to learn in the same way we do, they can absorb and process Big Data at a tremendous rate, soon becoming at least, if not more, reliable than humans when it comes to making decisions. The work of the Chinese giants – most prominently Baidu but also online retailer Ali Baba and chat provider Tencent - in the AI field has received relatively little coverage in western media compared to that afforded to the US giants.