ByteDance’s Pragmatic AI Strategy: A Factor in Its Lag Behind OpenAI and Its Approach to Catching Up
April 24, 2024 β 00:28
Investment Research Team
ByteDance launched a total of seven AI-based products across various categories in 2023, including AI chatbots and professional AI tools. Embracing a strategy of rapid trial and error, ByteDance is actively training its own large-scale models and testing their capabilities, aiming for a success similar to its TikTok app with one of its consumer AI products.
These AI products include DouBao, Cici, XiaoWuKong, ChitChop, Coze, KouZi, and BagelBell. In this article, we will review each of these products to assess the progress they have made or missed.
DouBao and Cici, similar to ChatGPT, were the first consumer AI products from ByteDance to emerge. Though not as capable as ChatGPT, these two products can provide satisfactory answers in terms of accuracy, responsiveness, and understanding of complex logic.
Cici quickly gained attention and climbed the charts. Over the past 180 days, Cici has accumulated 15.22 million downloads, but the majority of downloads were concentrated in November and December. Since 2024, download data has noticeably declined.
DouBao is facing a similar situation, with downloads gradually decreasing. This may be related to the intense competition in the AI chatbot space.
Coze and its Chinese version KouZi are AI bot creation platforms launched by ByteDance. These two products allow users to directly integrate a rich variety of plugins such as browsers, text-to-image, and video generation without any coding background.
According to SimilarWeb statistics, Coze had over 1.8 million visits in January 2024, several times more than the previous two months.
Currently, Coze supports adding CapCut plugins to create videos directly from templates, adding Notion plugins to access account documents, and accessing Tripadvisor plugins for real-time flight, ticket, and hotel information queries, as well as academic query plugins like Google Scholar for students.
However, the services provided by the bots are basic capabilities and sometimes may not accurately provide results based on user prompts.
XiaoWuKong is an AI tools platform launched based on ByteDance’s Skylark large-scale model. Currently, there are a total of 192 public tools available on XiaoWuKong, categorized into five types based on their specific functions: creation tools, productivity tools, life hacks, leisure and entertainment, and learning consultations.
Users can directly click into specific categories to search for and interact with AI tools that interest them. Users can see the popularity, main functions, and creators of each tool. Tools on the platform are created by users. The tools on the platform can fulfill basic Q&A needs but the practicality is relatively low.
XiaoWuKong offers multiple versions for iOS, Android, and web, primarily targeting the Chinese market. According to DotData, XiaoWuKong (iOS) has accumulated 740,000 downloads over the past year, with downloads mainly concentrated in October and November 2023.
XiaoWuKong/ChitChop: The New Era of Tools and AI Efficiency; According to DotData, ChitChop has been downloaded fewer than 3,000 times on the App Store in the past 90 days, and approximately 200,000 times on Google Play, all from Indonesia. According to SimilarWeb, in January 2024, the total web page visits amounted to 27,000, with visits mainly coming from Mainland China, Indonesia, the United States, Hong Kong SAR of China, and South Korea, which can’t be considered a particularly good performance.
On the other hand, XiaoWuKong offers multiple versions for iOS, Android, and web, primarily targeting the Chinese market. According to DotData, XiaoWuKong (iOS) has accumulated 740,000 downloads over the past year, with downloads mainly concentrated in October and November 2023.
ChitChop is also an AI tools platform launched by ByteDance in September 2023 targeting overseas markets. The platform is categorized into six major categories: AI creation, AI drawing, entertainment and leisure, learning and improvement, work efficiency, and life assistants.
Within each major category, there are further subdivisions into multiple subcategories, allowing users to find suitable bots based on popularity and needs.
According to statistics from the ChitChop website, the popularity of most bots currently ranges from 50,000 to 250,000, with no bots reaching the million-level popularity yet. However, due to the lack of clarity on how ChitChop measures popularity, it’s challenging to determine the actual usage of bots.
Based on the average usage time of 1 minute and 55 seconds and a bounce rate of 53.29% reported by SimilarWeb, the performance of the platform may not be very optimistic. The data also shows that nearly 28% of ChitChop users are between the ages of 35 and 44, and male users make up almost 72%, which is contrary to Character.ai that primarily composed of young users.
BagelBell is an AI interactive storytelling platform launched by ByteDance in December 2023. As of now, it has garnered less than a thousand downloads on the App Store, while on Google Play, it has been downloaded 188,000 times, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, and Malaysia.
BagelBell has not yet engaged in advertising or ongoing social media operations. However, it has opened official BagelBell accounts on TikTok, including a Brazilian version, occasionally posting experiential updates, though the view counts are very limited.
One notable aspect of BegelBell is the distinct characteristics of different AI personas. Users can interact with various AI stories they enjoy through AI character profiles, story titles, and story descriptions.
Currently, BagelBell offers a wide range of story genres, including school life, mystery, CEO romance, but primarily focusing on romance.
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