Ahead of the Baidu World 2023 conference, Baidu has revealed Baidu Xiao Universe, a metaverse-like mini ‘virtual space’ where the users can interact with Baidu’s AI-powered digital human Du Xiaoxiao. Built in collaboration with Shenzhen-based tech start-up Lingjing Zhiwei, the ‘mini space’ is a ‘digital amusement park’ that incorporates digital technology, entertainment and social functions.
With Du Xiaoxiao as their guide, the visitors can complete mini tasks and ‘unlock more computing power’ to enable more features, watch an AI-generated music video featuring Du Xiaoxiao, interact with branded content such as a quiz and socialise with each other. The mini space showcases possibilities for a ‘small and beautiful’ branded space with interactive and community features.
At the beginning of this year, Baidu made the ambitious claim that the MetaStack function of its metaverse platform XiRang enables companies to independently build metaverse spaces in just 40 days. The new ‘Baidu Xiao Universe’ mini space, built with Lingjing Zhiwei, also aims to optimise virtual worlds to be feature-rich but also require less computing power. These efforts are helping to make the virtual world more accessible as a marketing tool.
Baidu had also just made its ChatGPT-like AI chatbot ERNIE Bot available to the public this August. Du Xiaoxiao, one of Baidu’s first ‘virtual being’ IPs, is the face of its next step of AIGC.
