Artificial Intelligence (A.I) is the big buzz these days. But how does it impact WeChat?
It turns out plenty of WeChat accounts are usually using A.I and doing a lot with it.
Here are 5 great examples.
Voice recognition (Chumen wenwen)
Founded by former superstar Google engineers, Chumen Wenwen might be the best example of successful use of A.I within WeChat. The company raised 20 million USD so far, with prestigious investors including Sequoia capital.
The concept is simple: Chumen Wenwen is a combo of a “Siri-style” voice recognition + A.I software and WeChat (although the company also has its own native APP).
You can simply let Chumen Wenwen know what you want: restaurant, movie, massage, and it will send you a list of all the things around you.
The service connects with third parties like Dianping, so you can easily use it to book a restaurant or order a delivery!
Face recognition
Major tech companies have long been using face recognition (Facebook is using it to recognize people on pictures, and Apple uses to recognize your selfies on your phone and put them in a separate folder).
But did you know that some WeChat accounts also make use of the technoloy?
It’s plain simple: simply send a selfie to the account and it will send you a picture of a celebrity with whom you look alike.
Not very useful, but definitely a lot of fun!
Translation
What is one of the many usage of A.I that Google developed? Translation!
Well, it turns out there is a WeChat account which uses just the same kind of A.I technology (natural language processing).
Just write a word in English or Chinese and it will send out the translation!
WeChat girlfriend
The web has been hot with the news of Tay, the Microsoft Twitter bot which turned into a racist sex bot within 24 hours.
Well, did you know that WeChat has its own version of Tay, also developed by Microsoft? She’s called Xiao Bing.
Xiao Bing might not hold very deep conversations, but still an impressive A.I achievement! And all within WeChat!
“Guess who am I?” Game
Last but not least, this same WeChat account (Xiao Bing) can guess who you are thinking about by asking you a few questions!
Just think of someone and the account will start asking. It can get to the right answer surprisingly fast!
Although this type of artificial intelligence is less advanced than the ones above (it relies on decision trees which are a more archaic technique than deep learning used for face recognition or natural language processing) it remains incredibly impressive!
It took it only 8 questions to guess I was thinking about Harry Potter!
Conclusion
A.I is often showcased as a malicious terminator trying to take over the world. But A.I is actually not only part of the future: it is used on a daily basis by a large number of WeChat accounts.
So the question is now: how can you use A.I to improve your own users WeChat experience?
Want to learn more?
Interested in A.I and want to learn more about it, you can check out:
- This amazing blog post by Wait but Why (requires VPN)
- Andreessen Horowitz’s amazing podcasts on the topic
- For an optimistic vision of A.I.: Ray Kurweil’s book “How to create a mind”
- For a description of the dangers of A.I, Nick Bostrom’s book: “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies”