Electric vehicle hopes have supercharged shares of Chinese search giant Baidu, long a laggard among Chinese tech stocks. Such a move would make a certain amount of sense for a tech company with plentiful cash and investments in artificial intelligence and automated driving. But given the lack of detail or official confirmation, investors may be getting ahead of themselves. Baidu shares have surged 25% in less than a month after a report from Reuters last month said the company is considering making its own EVs and has held talks with other auto makers. Baidu's shares had been languishing for the past couple of years and were trading at nearly half a peak in 2018 before the recent rally.

Businesses are expected to spend as much as $97.9 billion annually on AI projects by 2023, up from just $37.5 billion this year, IDC forecasts. But there's still some debate about what qualifies as true AI. When China's state-run Xinhua News Agency last year announced that it had created the "world's first" AI news anchor, some in the industry balked. The digital anchor was built to move and speak as a normal anchor would, but its underlying technology leaned closer to machine learning than true artificial intelligence. Perhaps the simplest definition of what constitutes AI came from one of the founders of the discipline, Stanford University Professor John McCarthy, who died in 2011.

Most stocks, no matter how well they perform, eventually hit a rough patch that can serve as an excellent entry point for opportunistic investors. That may be the situation Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) currently finds itself in. Between the U.S.-China trade war and a decelerating economy, the internet tech giant has been feeling the pressure from multiple angles. As a result, Baidu's shares are down by about 50.7% from a year ago. Further, Baidu's valuation is down as well, trading at just 7.90 times past and 15.57

The system helps significantly reduce the time consumed in post-production. In addition, based on an AI-powered celebrity database of more than 2 million characters, iQIYI has also established an intelligent index which helps improve the production efficiency and quality of large-scale variety shows. This technology has become an industrial standard that is widely adopted to produce new-gen variety shows. Aside from professional content production, iQIYI also uses AI technology to assist UGC content creators with their productions by offering them massive creative content libraries and supplementary creative functions through an intelligent recreation system. Held under the theme of "Artificial Intelligence-New Momentum for High Quality Development", this year's WAIC aims at building the world's top AI cooperation and exchange platform, as well as showing that AI is leading the transformation of the modern life in Shanghai.

On August 28th, Xie Danming, Vice President of iQIYI, Inc. (IQ) ("iQIYI" or the "Company"), was invited to AITalk, a pre-conference event of the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference ("WAIC") Shanghai West Bund Forum. WAIC is China's first high-level conference that focuses on artificial intelligence ("AI"). At the event, Xie delivered a keynote speech titled "Making Art More Creative in the AI Era", sharing his understandings on the role AI plays in entertainment and artistic creation. In his speech, Xie used iQIYI as an example to explain how AI is applied to different aspects of its business to create a comprehensive entertainment ecosystem that is driven by technologies and innovations. To begin with, iQIYI's "AI Content" strategy has become a driving force for the creation of the company's hit shows.

The digital video company, which split from Baidu (BIDU), has been seeing losses since going public in the US last March. In this year's first quarter, the company's net loss jumped year-over-year to $270.3 million from $63.1 million as operating costs soared. In contrast, Tencent (TCEHY) made a profit of $4.1 billion in the first quarter, and Tencent Music (TME), a digital music company that split from Tencent and went public in December, posted a profit of $147 million. Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba (BABA), into the movie and video streaming business through its Alibaba Pictures and Youku units, made a profit of $3.8 billion in the first quarter, and Netflix (NFLX) and Amazon (AMZN) made profits of $344 million and $3.6 billion, respectively. Amazon is also into video streaming, although its main operations are e-commerce.

A new series of last year's TV hit The Rap of China has kicked off and with it comes the show's first female judge joining the likes of Kris Wu and MC Hotdog. The selection of Hong Kong singer G.E.M., real name Gloria Tang Tsz-Kei, has raised some eyebrows among critics due to the use of artificial intelligence in her selection, as well as her hip-hop credentials. "G.E.M joining The Rap of China is a bit of an embarrassment as her previous image falls short in terms of rap elements," one music critic after learning of the singer's inclusion on the talent show's judging panel. Although the news has drawn widespread criticism from a host of music critics, the move was not unexpected. With G.E.M's involvement, this show hit a new peak in terms of viewing figures in its first week.

Baidu Inc. is transferring its movie theater ticketing platform Nuomi Film to video streaming unit iQiyi Inc. so that it can focus efforts on the fast-growing artificial intelligence sector. Baidu had been long-rumored to be looking to offload parts of its Nuomi business, which had been hemorrhaging money after its parent company focused more intensely on the AI sector. The firm, most well-known for its dominant search engine, has adopted an AI strategy similar to Google-parent Alphabet Inc. covering consumer applications such as autonomous cars. Supported by the government's ambitions to become a world-leader by 2030, China is leading the race to develop AI products globally. The country dominated AI funding last year with Chinese startups accounting for a little under half of all financing pumped into the sector globally in 2017, leveraging China's vast market and well-established data infrastructure.

Baidu (BIDU) stock sold off Friday as analysts pondered whether its push into artificial intelligence will stall in the wake of its chief operating officer stepping down. COO Qi Lu, a former Microsoft (MSFT) executive, headed Baidu's artificial intelligence research. Baidu is just one stock to watch for artificial intelligence developments. The China-based internet search leader fell 7.4% to 259 on the stock market today, tumbling out of a buy zone. Credit Suisse downgraded Baidu to neutral on the management shake-up, announced late Thursday.

Baidu's (BIDU) push into artificial intelligence will take time to produce revenue while its iQiyi (IQ) video streaming unit faces challenges turning profitable, says one analyst who initiated coverage on Baidu Thursday. "We assign zero value for Baidu's AI business given it is too early for monetization, but view it as a call option for long-term growth," Hans Chung, analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, said in a note to clients. Chung gave Baidu a sector weight rating. Baidu, China's internet search engine leader, has an artificial intelligence strategy similar to Google-parent Alphabet (GOOGL). Baidu is pushing into artificial intelligence for consumer applications such as self-driving cars.