China’s three tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent all made “major announcements” today.
Baidu said that it has unveiled an AI assistant called Cupid which can detect its owners’ facial expressions and with that help intervene and mediate when couples quarrel. It was an April Fools’ joke of course, but — Baidu says — the technologies required to make this assistant a reality are already mature.
Alibaba’s Taobao announced that it has cooperated with a Chinese rocket company so that rockets could deliver its parcels worldwide within one hour after it is ordered. This was, of course, also a joke.
The last of the “big three”, Tencent, claimed on its official WeChat account that it would start testing its new gourmet AI assistant in June — a bot that can see raw cooking materials and evaluate their quality and can figure out how to cook a certain dish just by looking at it. Also, sadly, a joke.
Contact the writer at jingli@kr-asia.com