Produced by | He Xi | Typeset by | Ye Yuan

Zhang Yiming's aspirations for AI are evident.

According to recent overseas media reports, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is deeply committed to AI, personally overseeing the recruitment of AI engineers and researchers from rival companies. It is reported that Zhang Yiming's objective is to create "general artificial intelligence," a system that mirrors human intelligence.

Looking back over the past two years, ByteDance has actively established an "AI application factory," launching multiple AI applications in China, including Doubao, Maoxiang, Xinghui, and Doubao Aixue. The company has also expanded into overseas markets with the introduction of Doubao's international version, CiCi, and the AI search tool Gauth.

Among ByteDance's AI applications, Doubao stands out as a core product, featuring AI-powered chat, dialogue, question-and-answer functions, and enabling users to customize their own AI agents.

01

Doubao AI: Rapid Growth

Doubao was launched on August 17, 2023, with small-scale invitation testing beginning on the same day. Users can log in via phone number, Douyin, or Apple ID.

Since its 2023 launch, the Doubao large model has undergone several iterations and upgrades, now boasting powerful multimodal capabilities encompassing generative AI models for language, vision, speech, music, video, 3D, and other modalities. In December 2024, Doubao released a visual understanding model with an input cost of 0.003 yuan per thousand tokens, equivalent to processing 284 720P images for one yuan, significantly reducing application costs.

In terms of its product matrix, Doubao has continued to expand and diversify its offerings. Initially focusing on AI dialogue products, Doubao has evolved into a comprehensive AI application platform encompassing video generation, visual understanding, 3D generation, and other fields, forming a "Doubao+" ecosystem. Its products are not only widely used in over 50 businesses within ByteDance but have also opened invitation tests to over 30 external industries.

Its broad application scenarios are another key factor in Doubao's rapid growth. In information processing, Doubao efficiently analyzes and organizes vast amounts of data, helping users quickly obtain required information and significantly improving work efficiency. In customer service and sales, Doubao provides personalized services and product recommendations through intelligent dialogue and data analysis, effectively enhancing customer satisfaction and sales conversion rates. In education, Doubao's visual understanding model optimizes students' problem-solving experience by intelligently recognizing and analyzing questions, offering more precise and personalized learning assistance. In video creation, Doubao's video generation model has a deep understanding of Chinese and Chinese users, capable of generating high-quality video content based on user needs and creativity, adapting to the creative workflow of the Chinese internet and providing robust support for video creators.

Furthermore, Doubao continuously optimizes its algorithms and computing power to enhance model response speed and accuracy, ensuring a smooth and efficient user experience.

The continuous enhancement of model capabilities and improvement of user experience have fueled explosive growth in Doubao's user base. On May 15, 2024, ByteDance's Vice President of Products and Strategy, Zhu Jun, announced at the 2024 Spring Volcano Engine Force Conference that the total downloads of the Doubao APP had reached 100 million. As of the end of November 2024, its cumulative user base had surpassed 160 million, with an average of approximately 800,000 new daily downloads, a figure that leads the current AI application market. In November 2024, the daily active users of the Doubao APP approached 9 million, with a growth rate exceeding 15%, and monthly active users (MAU) reached 51.3 million, demonstrating a high level of user dependency and active usage frequency.

In the global AI application market, Doubao ranks second, closely trailing ChatGPT, while in the domestic AI application market, Doubao has emerged as the undisputed leader in the consumer market.

02

The Driving Forces Behind Doubao AI's Rapid Growth

Several key factors contribute to the rapid growth in Doubao AI's user base.

First, Doubao excels in technological innovation. For instance, Doubao's proprietary AI large model boasts industry-leading content recognition, understanding, and reasoning capabilities, as well as nuanced visual description abilities. It can recognize basic image elements such as objects, shapes, and categories, and also understand relationships between objects, spatial layouts, and the overall meaning of scenes. For example, it can recognize complex scenes involving shadow shapes and natural knowledge. Additionally, Doubao's advanced machine learning and natural language processing technologies exhibit exceptional capabilities in intelligent recommendation, speech recognition, and other fields, accurately pushing relevant content based on user interests and behavior habits, thereby enhancing user stickiness and activity levels.

Second, Doubao's marketing and promotion strategies are efficient and effective. In terms of pricing, Doubao offers highly competitive rates, such as its enterprise market pricing of 0.8 yuan per million tokens and an output price of 2 yuan per million tokens, attracting a significant number of enterprise users and developers to utilize its large model services. For promotion, leveraging ByteDance's formidable advertising capabilities and vast traffic pool, Doubao conducts high-frequency and precise advertising on platforms like Douyin, Toutiao, and Xigua Video. According to AppGrowing data, as of November 15, domestic large model products such as Kimi, Doubao, and Yuanbao collectively placed over 6.25 million advertisements this year, with an advertising expenditure of 1.5 billion yuan. As ByteDance's flagship AI product, Doubao quickly captured the market with its extensive advertising network.

Moreover, accurately grasping user needs has also fueled Doubao's user growth. In terms of usability, Doubao emphasizes input convenience, such as dialogue box prompts like "Interpret this webpage and output a clear summary" and "What is the main content of this webpage?" This input convenience allows users to quickly post needs and questions, reducing communication barriers and enhancing user efficiency and experience, thereby attracting more users to try and use Doubao. Doubao also pays special attention to addressing industry challenges and users' genuine "rigid demands." For instance, in the realm of image creation and editing, based on the Doubao large model, Jimeng AI pioneered capabilities such as "one-sentence image editing," "one-click poster creation," and "dynamic posters," significantly improving the accuracy of text generation in images and resolving a major long-standing industry issue, thereby attracting a large number of users with related needs.

Doubao is also among the large models that optimize product functionality and experience the fastest. Since its launch, Doubao has continuously expanded and added more product capabilities, encompassing diverse AI tracks such as chat assistants, virtual socializing, agent creation, AI search, and AI creation, fulfilling the varied needs of different scenarios and user groups and increasing user frequency and duration. Doubao has also collaborated with platforms like Toutiao to introduce Doubao AI assistants through the development of browser plugins, computer operating system auxiliary plugins, etc. These plugin-based expansion methods enable Doubao to integrate more seamlessly into users' daily usage scenarios, further enhancing user experience and dependency. The proliferation of Doubao agents has also accelerated its development. During agent usage, users can share agent links with others. This viral sharing mechanism not only brings more traffic and new users to Doubao but also fosters interaction and user stickiness, generating a positive word-of-mouth effect.

Zhang Yiming's emphasis on AI is also a pivotal factor in Doubao's rapid development.

In summary, the rapid growth in Doubao AI's user base is the culmination of its technological innovation, market strategy, accurate grasp of user needs, and optimization of product functionality and experience.

03

Can Doubao Evolve into ByteDance's "AI Douyin"?

With its rapidly expanding user base, continuously iterating products, and ranking second only to ChatGPT, Doubao's development prospects appear promising. So, can Doubao evolve into ByteDance's "AI Douyin"? Or, can Doubao become ByteDance's second growth trajectory?

It's essential to note that although Doubao has demonstrated a certain level of innovation in technology and achieved notable results in the AI field, it is still far from becoming ByteDance's "AI Douyin."

The disparity between Doubao and "Douyin" is not merely reflected in user scale and recognition but, more crucially, stems from some inherent weaknesses within Doubao itself.

First, Doubao's primary weakness lies in its user scale and stickiness. According to November 2024 data, Doubao APP's daily active users approached 9 million, with monthly active users reaching 51.3 million. Now let's compare this to Douyin. According to public reports, Douyin's daily active users (DAU) have surpassed the 800 million mark, and its monthly active users (MAU) have exceeded 1.58 billion. The gap in both daily and monthly active users is strikingly apparent. Regarding user stickiness, Doubao relies on advertising and marketing to acquire a substantial number of users in the short term, but the drawback is equally evident: user stickiness is often insufficient. According to Quantum Bit Intelligence data, in November, the average three-day retention rate for the Doubao AI APP was approximately 28%. As many people find themselves unable to stop scrolling through Douyin, the comparison between the two is unfavorable for Doubao.

Second, Doubao's business model remains unclear. Globally, AI large models have yet to establish mature business models. Taking ChatGPT as an example, its primary business models include the "product model" of one-time on-demand charging and the "subscription model" of periodic usage. Clearly, ChatGPT's model is not suitable for Doubao given domestic user habits. The challenge facing Doubao now is that as market competition intensifies, relying solely on price advantages is difficult to sustain long-term competitive advantages. How to effectively convert user traffic into commercial value is an urgent issue that needs addressing. This requires Doubao AI not only to enhance user experience and increase user stickiness but also to explore viable commercialization paths in areas such as advertising, content payment, and enterprise services.

Furthermore, in terms of functionality, while Doubao AI currently offers a variety of smart assistant services, there are still limitations in practical applications. For example, the content it generates sometimes lacks innovation and uniqueness, making it challenging to meet the needs of some high-end users. Additionally, when dealing with complex, abstract, or emotionally rich topics, Doubao may not fully comprehend and express user intent, resulting in generated articles or content that are inaccurate or inappropriate. Based on my personal usage, Doubao occasionally exhibits some "hallucinations," raising significant doubts about its suitability for production use. As AI technology continues to advance, user expectations for AI products are also on the rise. This necessitates Doubao AI to consistently introduce new technologies and functions while maintaining its existing functional advantages, enhancing the product's intelligence level to meet the challenges posed by competitors.

Lastly, the competition in the current AI large model market has only just commenced, akin to the early stages of a marathon. Leading at this point does not equate to true dominance. For Doubao, the competition has only just begun. To go the distance, ByteDance must make long-term investments and provide strategic support to Doubao, helping it overcome short-term difficulties and challenges to achieve sustainable growth and development.

In conclusion, Doubao has a long journey ahead before it can become ByteDance's new "AI Douyin." Whether it's user scale, business models, or functional optimization, Doubao still needs continuous refinement, exploration, and breakthroughs. Only then does Doubao AI have the potential to become ByteDance's "AI Douyin".