Tencent aims to ‘take AI everywhere’

Source: Xinhua | 2017-11-10

ARTIFICIAL Intelligence isn't just a thing of science fiction anymore, with the technology playing a bigger and bigger role in our everyday lives, whether we realize it or not.

One of the big players in the area, Tencent Inc, plans to integrate AI capabilities into its various businesses, covering cloud, app stores, and gaming.

It also aims to open AI platforms to more industry partners, which is expected to boost China’s AI development thanks to the giant’s huge user base and influence.

Tencent also announced it will invest 10 billion yuan (US$1.52 billion) in 2018 to encourage users to contribute more content to its eco-system.

“We want to take AI everywhere, covering cutting-edge academic research and several applications like facial recognition, healthcare and machine learning translation,” Zhang Tong, director of Tencent’s AI Lab said.

The results of AI Lab, covering Tencent’s algorithm and calculation ability, has been used in Tencent’s various services covering cloud and application stores. It will soon be used in the social and games businesses of Tencent, which covers over one billion users across China.