On 2 July, reports circulated that Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has been preparing its embodied AI models for release and already has over 10 robotics companies as partners under its embodied AI brand, JoyInside. Rumour has it that a prominent designer AI toy brand is also integrating JoyInside and will soon launch exclusively on JD.com.
JD.com confirmed the rumours, adding that its embodied AI focuses on human x canine x toy at its centre. Currently, known robots deployed with JoyInside models include MagicDog Pro from Magiclab, desktop humanoid robot NIA-F01 from Figurobot, SenseTime’s educational chess robot, and Engine AI’s PM01, among others.
The buzz around JD.com’s foray into the embodied AI field has been gaining traction since as early as March. At the time, it was reported to be mostly aimed at home use. In May, JD.com participated in the B+ round of investment of the Chinese robotics company AgiBot. During the 618 Sales Festival, smart robot sales grew 3 times year-on-year (YoY), and embodied AI robots saw their sales increase 17 times YoY.
Embodied AI has been quietly yet rapidly developing in China, mostly in the form of AI-controlled robotic arms. The machinery is typically powered by domestic AI models such as Huawei’s PanguLM as the ‘brain’ and use a model-specific ‘cerebellum’, which is sometimes developed by the robotics company. As experts point out, embodied AI is still in an “exploration” phase, comparable to the pre-GPT-3 stage of large language models. It’s worth watching to see whether JD.com is bringing something new to the table, or if the new products will turn out to be gimmicks.