China Startup Pulse: Sogou, the Chinese AI company revolutionizing the world’s TV news industry
Sogou recently attracted attention from around the world for launching an AI virtual anchor that can read the news while mimicking human facial expressions and mannerisms in 2018 World Internet Conference.
With a focus on natural language processing, Sogou is an AI-driven innovator and leader in China’s Internet industry. Today, Sogou is China’s second largest search engine by mobile queries and the country’s fourth-largest Internet company by monthly active users.
Language lies at the core of Sogou’s AI platform and strategy, and this has allowed Sogou to achieve significant breakthroughs in key visual technologies (OCR, Chinese character synthesis, image recognition, facial/lip recognition, and synthesis) and voice technologies (voice recognition and synthesis), as well as Q&A, translation and dialogue technologies.
Established in 2012 and aimed to achieve natural interaction between humans and machines, Sogou’s Voice Interaction Technology Center has developed cutting-edge technologies in speech recognition, handwriting recognition, lip reading, machine translation, sematic understanding, speech synthesis and also AI anchor.
To better understand Sogou’s technology and the business of this giant tech firm in China, China Startup Pulse Podcast has invited Chen Wei, Senior Director and Chief Scientist of Sogou Voice Interaction Technology Center, to introduce the technological breakthroughs in speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis, as well as explore the new opportunities in the future.
Chen Wei and his team also developed the Zhiyin知音 OS system with multi-modal perception capabilities including speech recognition, handwriting recognition and lip-reading ability. In this episode, he briefly introduced how this system is being applied in 3 different fields: 1) partnering with Tencent and other companies to integrate Zhiyin with mobile phones and smart watches; 2) implementing Zhiyin system for IoT devices such as televisions and speakers 3) working with automotive companies, such as NIO, for in-car systems.
About Sogou:
Sogou’s Co-developed Speech Translation System Ranked NO.1 at IWSLT 2018
Sogou Showcases Speech Synthesis and Style Transfer Technology on Earnings Call
Sogou Provides AI-powered Machine Simultaneous Translation at China Open Tennis Championship
About China Startup Pulse:
The China Startup Pulse is a podcast designed to give startup enthusiasts from around the world a behind the scenes and on-the-ground understanding of what’s happening in China’s startup ecosystem every week. Run by Chinaccelerator and SOSV, hosted by Ryan Shuken, William Bao Bean and Oscar Ramos, and founded by Ryan Shuken & Todd Embley — hackers and hustlers on the ground and at the epicenter of it all in Shanghai, China.
Hosts: Oscar Ramos, Ryan Shuken, William Bao Bean
Producer: Eva Shi
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Contact us at eva.shi@chinastartuppulse.com
