Over the past half-century, numerous concepts and aspirations have emerged around the development of information technology. After briefly stimulating market interest, most emerging technologies face the dilemma of being unable to make significant breakthroughs or practical applications.

If the reasons for the failure of emerging technologies that disappear amid the hustle and bustle are varied, there is a universal truth for technologies that change the world – amid boundless imagination, they generate tangible commercial value and create immense incremental wealth.

This time, it's AI's turn to deliver.

01 The Dimensional Upgrade War for Global Large Models

In 2024, especially in recent months, leading large model players have gradually realized the importance of 'making money.' According to media reports on November 5, OpenAI took a significant step, initially discussing with regulators to transform into a for-profit company.

In fact, before this landmark event, the shift from model competition to application layer competition had almost become a consensus among the first tier of global AI large model players.

In the Chinese market, Baidu, which has invested the longest in the domestic AI sector, was the first to recognize and propose that AI large model competition should shift from the model itself to product applications:

As early as last year, when domestic large model products were still scarce, Robin Li first proposed the concept of AI-native applications. At Baidu World 2021 in October, Li made a direct judgment: without rich AI-native applications built on basic models, large models are worthless.

In overseas markets, since the beginning of this year, from SORA, Gemini to o1, each round of model iterations has been anchored on the commercial application ecosystem potential achievable through the models.

The shift from models to applications signifies that the global AI industry is about to enter a phase of genuine commercial competition, weeding out the fake and retaining the genuine.

02 China's AI 'sixpence' moment

During the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in July this year, Robin Li presented the essence of super apps to the market: in the AI era, 'super capable' apps are more important than 'super apps' that only focus on DAU. As long as they generate significant benefits for industries and application scenarios, their overall value is much greater than that of mobile internet.

At the same time, Robin Li pointed out bluntly that the best AI-native applications will be 'intelligent agents.'

Cognition determines practice, and practice enhances cognition.

Most investments in emerging technology industries follow two main logical threads: a hype cycle fueled by excitement and a value cycle after eliminating noise. Reflected in technical graphs, these are a bell curve combined with an S-curve, which together form the guiding light for emerging technology investments: the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) curve.

Graph: Composition of the TRL curve, Source: China Galaxy Securities Research Institute

From a factual perspective, in the current domestic market, it is precisely the concrete practice of the industrial strategy centered on AI intelligent agents that makes it highly likely for Baidu to take the lead in entering the 'S-curve' trajectory.

This can be seen through this year's Baidu World Conference.

At the Intelligent Agent sub-forum of Baidu World 2024, Baidu Search, in collaboration with technology partner NVIDIA, held the award ceremony for the finals of the '2024 Baidu Search · ERNIE Bot Innovation Contest.' What impressed us the most was the real capabilities and wealth effects generated by 'Baidu Intelligent Agents,' giving us a glimpse of the nascent commercial ecosystem in the era of AI large models.

For example, the champion intelligent agent, 'Emotional Counseling Mentor Xiaoxiao,' not only answers users' emotional dilemmas but also provides creators with effective financial returns through independently mounted service links.

Graph: Baidu Intelligent Agent Emotional Counseling Mentor Xiaoxiao, Source: Baidu ERNIE Bot Platform, Silk Road Research

The field of emotional intelligent agents is also one of the first areas where the ERNIE Bot Platform has successfully implemented a closed business loop. The link mounted by Emotional Counseling Mentor Xiaoxiao is one of the five commercial component functions launched by the Baidu ERNIE Bot Platform, including link mounting, product conversion, lead conversion, affiliate advertising, and capsule position components, providing comprehensive support for commercialization.

Currently, over 100,000 intelligent agents have mounted commercial components, with a 395% increase in intelligent agents with monetization capabilities and a maximum single monetization income of 100,000 yuan.

This echoes Baidu founder Robin Li's assertion at Baidu World 2024: the era of making money solely through ideas has arrived.

Another example is the intelligent agent that won first prize in the commercial track, 'Xiaosheng Shopping Assistant.' You can tell it your needs, and it will cross-platform compare prices to show you suitable products. If you find a desired product, it will directly attach a shopping link after further questioning, saving you time and effort.

Graph: Baidu Intelligent Agent Xiaosheng Shopping Assistant, Source: Baidu ERNIE Bot Platform, Silk Road Research

According to data provided by Baidu, over 30% of award winners from this contest have already started earning money through intelligent agents. This reveals that Baidu Intelligent Agents not only fulfill the definition of super apps – being 'super capable' and generating practical benefits for users but also realize profit feedback on the supply side through mounting and services, initially proving the possibility of AI transitioning from being valuable to profitable.

We can therefore conclude that the development of Baidu Intelligent Agents provides an effective model for transitioning from AI technology to AI applications and leveraging AI to generate practical benefits. China's AI is embracing its own 'sixpence' moment.

03 Why 'Baidu Intelligent Agents'?

There is a high probability that the future of large model commercialization represented by Baidu Intelligent Agents will be the answer to leading AI technology into the value curve.

This is because the implementation of Baidu Intelligent Agents demonstrates the potential for AI large models to form a closed business loop from supply, demand, and channels:

1. Baidu Intelligent Agents can effectively lower the threshold for advanced supply and create incremental business demand.

Advanced supply is a prerequisite for creating incremental demand. Smartphones, electric vehicles, drones, etc., all prove this point. As a product of the AI-native era, Baidu Intelligent Agents represent the latest generation of advanced supply.

More importantly, through nearly a decade of honing 'hardware and software integrated' AI capabilities, Baidu Intelligent Agents can be created through natural language interaction and can automatically generate basic configurations, making them completely code-free, threshold-free super AI applications – thus enabling large-scale supply across all industrial sectors.

We tried creating a simple intelligent agent, which took less than 20 minutes from creation to publication. The content accuracy, logic, and presentation were quite good.

Graph: Demonstration of Creating Baidu Intelligent Agents, Source: Baidu ERNIE Bot Platform, Silk Road Research

Want to continuously optimize? It's simple.

Baidu and its partners provide various professional plugins and support self-construction of plugins and workflows, helping developers realize complex functions and enhance the performance of intelligent agents.

If the low theoretical threshold is hard to understand, Baidu founder Robin Li and Zhao Shiqi, Vice President of Baidu and General Manager of Baidu Search, shared a case at the World Conference: an 11-year-old elementary school student developer compiled his adolescent confusions, insights, and experiences into an intelligent agent, 'Little Mentor for Adolescent Growth.' This 11-year-old student was also one of the participants in the Baidu Search · ERNIE Bot Innovation Contest.

From large-scale enterprises to young children, everyone can experience the advantages brought by technological development and reap commercial profits from it, which is a direct manifestation of advanced productivity driving the development of advanced production relations.

Currently, the number of developers on the ERNIE Bot Platform has exceeded 800,000, with over 150,000 partner enterprises. Compared to June this year, the number of intelligent agents on the platform has increased by 310%.

2. Relying on the Baidu ecosystem to leverage the advantages of the traffic matrix to match real demand

Relying solely on the low threshold of the supply side is insufficient for shaping a commercial ecosystem; the channel aspect is also crucial for realizing the commercial link. This is precisely Baidu's comparative advantage: leveraging the Baidu ecosystem, Baidu Intelligent Agents have constructed a '1+N' distribution strategy, where '1' represents Baidu Search and 'N' represents Baidu's product matrix, including Wenxiaoyan, Xiaodu, Baidu Baike, Baidu Post Bar, Baidu Netdisk, etc. All these Baidu-affiliated products are commercial scenarios that have been verified by the market over a long period and represent massive real demand.

Therefore, for developers, this means that they only need to develop once to reach Baidu's diverse, multi-terminal scenarios, achieving maximum distribution effectiveness.

According to Baidu data, compared to the beginning of the year, the total distribution volume of intelligent agents created by developers on the ERNIE Bot Platform has increased by 16 times, and the number of distributed intelligent agents has increased by 22 times.

At the same time, through template-based access forms such as API and SDK, independent apps, WeChat Mini Programs, websites, and other non-Baidu domain scenarios are connected, enabling intelligent agents to receive more traffic support.

For example, the AI Volunteer Assistant intelligent agent launched by Baidu this year was used by over 3.2 million users daily at its peak.

Besides the platform, Baidu has also made significant efforts in supply-demand matching.

At the Baidu World Conference, Huang Jizhou, Chief Architect of Baidu Intelligent Agent Business, detailed the logic of intelligent agent distribution: based on the generative system of large models, user demand expression, intelligent agent distribution pool, comprehension and evaluation information, and multi-objective scoring set for large models, ultimately achieving precise matching.

Meanwhile, for traffic allocation rules, Baidu provides two concepts, 'support for newcomers' and 'weighting for quality,' realizing the positive feedback synergy of traffic inclusiveness and content quality.

3. Feeding back supply through existing commercial models to realize a closed business loop

After connecting supply, demand, and matching channels, the final and most crucial step is to effectively feedback supply while generating practical value, completing a closed business loop and realizing the flywheel effect of technology and commerce.

In our view, this is the core reason why the Baidu Intelligent Platform currently outperforms other AI products: through five functions, namely affiliate advertising, link mounting, lead form, product mounting, and homepage capsule, Baidu Intelligent Agents have embarked on the fast track of commercial monetization.

Besides the cases mentioned above, Baidu Intelligent Agents have successfully implemented vertical sectors such as emotions, law, and health.

In the legal field, through vertical model training on the platform and personal knowledge base tuning for lawyers, intelligent agents can answer many users' questions instead of lawyers. This solves the pain points of science popularization often requiring repeated communication and guidance, while lawyers' time and resources are limited.

Currently, over 500 lawyer intelligent agent avatars have been launched on the ERNIE Bot Platform, with 15% having over 100,000 followers on the internet or being law firm directors.

Zhang Jialiang, a lawyer with over one million followers, has created an intelligent agent on the ERNIE Bot Platform to provide legal consultations to users, reducing the pressure of daily legal science popularization and collecting information from highly interested users through conversion components.

In the medical field, Baidu introduced over 100 doctor resources this year, over 92% of whom are directors or above from authoritative tertiary hospitals, helping them launch personal intelligent agents.

Intelligent agents provide targeted solutions for different stages before, during, and after diagnosis.

The intelligent agent of Dr. Qiao Guibin, a thoracic surgeon with over 4 million followers on the internet, serves as an avatar of Dr. Qiao. Possessing the doctor's knowledge base, it not only enables patients to communicate freely with well-known doctors, solving the problem of insufficient medical resources but also assists in obtaining Dr. Qiao's appointment sources.

According to Xie Tian, General Manager of Baidu Industry Search and Intelligent Agent Business, intelligent agents have also effectively driven B2B customer acquisition, reducing enterprises' traffic costs.

Companies such as B&Q in the home improvement sector, Autohome in the consumer sector, and Yonyou in the SaaS sector have benefited from this.

Currently, over 100,000 intelligent agents have mounted commercial components, with a 395% increase in intelligent agents with monetization capabilities and a maximum single monetization income of 100,000 yuan.

By lowering the supply threshold, optimizing supply-demand matching, and feeding back supply through mature commercial models to realize a closed business loop, this is the core reason why Baidu Intelligent Agents can take the lead in reaching the 'sixpence' moment.

04 Conclusion: From AI Technology Prosperity to AI Commercial Prosperity

According to the latest QuestMobile report, the Baidu ERNIE Bot Platform is the earliest intelligent agent creation platform with commercialization capabilities.

This point is crucial: over the past two decades in the internet information era, most advanced technologies that eventually became industrial-level infrastructure have followed the criterion of 'good technology can make money' and demonstrated the flywheel effect of super technology application and super commercial ecosystem.

The above facts have initially proven that Baidu Intelligent Agents are demonstrating such potential. This will soon bring about a flywheel effect for its leading large model technology and commercial ecosystem. We have witnessed such a value curve in the search era and recommendation engine era.

Historical experience tells us that new technologies that cannot be implemented have no future. Baidu Intelligent Agents demonstrate that good strategies and models can help the current AI industry achieve profitability and embark on the right track towards long-term success.

Represented by Baidu, a new era is about to begin, transitioning from AI technology prosperity to AI commercial prosperity.