Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series ditches Google for Baidu AI in China

Once dominant in China, Samsung hopes Baidu's AI gives its new phones an edge over local rivals.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 series. (Image: Nandagopal Rajan/The Indian Express)

Samsung has taken a different approach for the launch of its new Galaxy S24 smartphone lineup in China compared to other markets like the US. Rather than utilising Google’s AI capabilities, Samsung is partnering exclusively with Chinese tech firm Baidu to power the AI features on the Chinese models, according to a CNBC report.

This collaboration was highlighted during the recent unveiling of the Galaxy S24 series in China. Samsung and Baidu issued a joint statement emphasising that the Chinese version of the Galaxy S24 will leverage Baidu’s Ernie chatbot technology. Ernie will enable AI translations, text summarisations, and other productivity features on the new devices.

The focus on Baidu represents a major divergence from Samsung’s global launches, where Google’s Gemini AI underpins the headline Galaxy AI capabilities. Google’s limited presence and services in China due to government restrictions appears to be the key factor behind Samsung’s turn to Baidu.

Baidu gained approval from Chinese officials to deploy Ernie last year after initially unveiling the chatbot in 2021. Ernie 4.0 launched in October 2023 and Baidu claims it matches and even exceeds the abilities of Google’s new GPT-4 system in areas like language understanding and text generation.

Samsung and Baidu highlighted Ernie’s text summarisation skills in their statement, noting it can “summarise lengthy content into clear, intelligently organised formats.” This aligns with the real-time translation and other AI features that impressed on the Galaxy S24 launch in the US and other Western markets.

While Samsung aims to showcase its AI collaborations with leading players in each market, the company ultimately faces an uphill battle to revive its sales in China. Homegrown brands like Oppo and Vivo now thoroughly dominate the Chinese smartphone arena.