BEIJING, Nov. 16, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU) held its annual conference "Baidu World" in Beijing today with the theme "Bring AI to Life", highlighting Baidu's efforts to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to everyday life and expand products and services empowered with intelligent technology to better understand and serve users. "Many people think that the world will become more and more complicated. With the arrival of the AI era, Baidu believes that we can bring changes to everything through technology," said Robin Li, Baidu's Chairman and CEO. "Baidu hopes to use AI technologies to make a complex world simper, because today, Baidu knows you better than you know yourself." During the Baidu World morning keynotes, Baidu released Mobile Baidu 10.0, the latest iteration of its flagship mobile search app, and its first AI-powered hardware, the Raven series.

Chinese internet search giant Baidu on Thursday introduced a speaker and two robots as part of its Raven series in a serious push into the highly competitive smart home market. The products, introduced at the Baidu World conference in Beijing, are powered by the company's DuerOS conversational artificial intelligence technology. That system is similar to virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa, the Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana. The smart speaker is called Raven H and will be available for purchase in December for about 1,699 yuan ($256). Design-wise, the speaker looks like a stack of thin, colored square blocks and it comes with a touch-sensitive light-emitting diode (LED) display controller.

Baidu is furthering its push into artificial intelligence after it announced the acquisition of Raven Tech, a Chinese startup that developed an AI voice assistant platform. Baidu confirmed it has bought the startup's tech, product and staff of 60. The deal comes a month after Baidu hired noted AI expert Qi Lu, formerly with Microsoft, as its COO and Group President. Baidu didn't reveal how much it is paying for Raven Tech, which is an alumnus of the Microsoft Venture Accelerator and Y Combinator and has raised $18 million from investors like DCM Ventures and Zhenfund. Raven Tech's Flow product was likened to a Chinese version of Siri, but it has failed to take off.

Baidu is furthering its push into artificial intelligence after it announced the acquisition of Raven Tech, a Chinese startup that developed an AI voice assistant platform. Baidu confirmed it has bought the startup's tech, product and staff of 60. The deal comes a month after Baidu hired noted AI expert Qi Lu, formerly with Microsoft, as its COO and Group President. Baidu didn't reveal how much it is paying for Raven Tech, which is an alumni of the Microsoft Venture Accelerator and Y Combinator and has raised $18 million from investors like DCM Ventures and Zhenfund. Raven Tech's Flow product was likened to a Chinese version of Siri, but it has failed to take off.