Author: Zhou Yuan/Wall Street News

Future intelligence has taken another big step in terms of intelligence.

On May 15, Future Intelligence released new productivity tools in the vertical field of conference offices: the next-generation iFlyBuds Pro 2, iFlyBuds 2, and Viaim Kit 2, bringing users new software and hardware upgrades.

This is a vertical segmented scene smart terminal based on the “GAI” underlying technology logic launched by Future Intelligence based on the “traditional TWS sound quality and noise reduction headphone” product and functional framework. On an objective level, it has played a role in enriching the ecosystem of China's AI industry.

Behind these new GAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence) products, future intelligent business thinking is based on this foundation —

Hu Yu, co-founder of iFLYTEK and Chairman of Future Intelligence, said, “Our goal is to achieve the user's office assistant function in specific scenarios through the integration of software and hardware (deep integration) in the form of an 'AI+ hardware' product, and to maximize this experience.”

Judging from the features of the new iFLYTEX conference headset released this time, Wall Street news has noticed that Future Intelligence is the same as different types of terminal companies such as Lenovo Group, OPPO, and Honor. Its commercial thinking is iterative — using office conference headphones as carriers to provide C-end users with personal assistants with GAI capabilities.

This is in line with Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing's statement that AI PCs provide individual users with “digital twins.”

How can this commercial goal be achieved on a technical and commercial level?

Retain: Focus on vertical segmentation scenes

It's been about a year and a half since ChatGPT launched, 18 months in total.

In the secondary market, enthusiasm for GAI technology at the bottom of ChatGPT also went from initial confusion to a rapid transition to a high level of enthusiasm, then fell to a low point, then made a comeback, and Russia once again entered a state of relative calm, which can be described as having ups and downs.

What is different from this is that the attitude and actions of domestic and overseas industries are relatively calm. Compared with the secondary market, the industry is more long-term.

“From 0 to 1, China is really not as good as the US. However, from 1 to 100, China's ability to innovate stands out from the rest of the world.” The CTO of a GAI technology company made such an exclamation during an exchange of news with Wall Street.

From Internet technology to mobile internet, the history of native technology and the development path of the applied manufacturing industry confirms this person's view—native technologies such as PCs, the Internet, functions, smart phones, and AI all originated in the US, and as a major technology application country, China can often “take the lead” in exploring the commercial application of original technology.

Generally speaking, America's comparative advantage is technological innovation, while China is based on innovative applications and manufacturing.

At the level of industrialization of technology and applications, China is similar to the US. The GAI industrialization path is roughly divided into two categories: platform-level giants mainly provide general models, and technology innovation companies focus on exploring software and hardware solution requirements in vertical segments; the difference between the two is that the US has dominance of software and hardware GAI technology: there are hardware companies such as Nvidia and AMD that provide supercomputing power, as well as leaders in exploring cutting-edge AI-based technology such as OpenAI.

An AI startup from Hefei, China - Future Intelligence is representative of this industrial path: an office conference headset dedicated to the development of an office conference headset, that is, presenting results for commercialization of ChatGPT-like platforms, and an ecosystem to achieve commercial value, providing vertical scene data and training iterations.

Ma Xiao, CEO of Future Intelligence, said, “Current experience shows that future AI technology will generate more value in more vertical places.” Therefore, the technological direction of technological innovation does not have to pursue unlimited diffusion; it can be retained, and it is more valuable to cultivate deeply in the domain.

New products such as iFlyBuds Pro 2, the next-generation iFlyBuds Pro 2 conference headset released by Future Intelligence are the latest proof that future intelligence will continue to work well in vertical segmentation scenarios.

“In the AIGC field, vertical scene service tools are more practical than pan-intelligent tools.” Ma Xiao said, “In the field of vertical office meetings, future intelligence has formed the Matthew effect of data, creating a very practical AI conference assistant.”

Ma Xiao's expression has three layers of meaning.

First, Ma Xiao once again emphasized the technical logic and industrial value of future smart office conference headsets.

The likely evolution path of Chinese-style ChatGPT is that several large companies, such as Baidu, Tencent, or Ali, are responsible for building platforms; on these platforms, there must be “a large number of fine-tuned models based on vertical fields to do vertical services on Chinese-style ChatGPT.

The future smart long-term office conference headphone category is based on segmented office meeting scenarios to solve various problems such as recording, recording, text conversion, or language translation of office scenes. The purpose is to help conference participants improve office efficiency.

Second, with target users — urban white-collar workers, government officials, lawyers, journalists, foreign trade workers, multinational company managers, and brokerage analysts, etc., the high-frequency application of these headphones is actually equivalent to forming specific semantic labels and refining parameters for various occupations in vertical fields, so it is possible to build large-scale large-scale office data (libraries).

The value of data is unrivaled.

“Judging from the first principles of a big model, a big model requires three elements: computing power, algorithms, and data.” Wang Song, CTO of Future Intelligence, said, “Among them, data is the key.”

Ma Xiao further explained: “We did a vertical scene. If we continue to deeply cultivate the scene, then there will be a lot of data we can collect and sort out in this scene. Our headphones aren't a full time all-rounder; we just need to be better than others in this scene.”

Become a more natural AI personal assistant

Compared with the smart launch of the iFlyBuds Nano series of office conference headphones in 2023, the technical and commercial thinking behind the “iFlyBuds Pro 2, iFlyBuds 2, and Kit 2” launched this time is also iterative.

Behind the functional surface of any terminal product, there are changes in technical logic and commercial value considerations.

What kind of technology is selected should combine various factors such as cost, breadth and depth of problem solving or demand, stage of technology development, supply chain technical capabilities, and different business strategies and goals. These factors are combined to ultimately form a commercial product that can be seen or perceived by B-side or C-side users.

So, what are the three new products, technology, and iterations of business thinking brought about by future intelligence? What is the incremental value for C-side users?

This involves the third meaning of Ma Xiao's expression: “We have created a very practical AI conference assistant.” Obviously, the core iteration is an “AI conference (personal) assistant.” At the same time, this iteration also follows the three core guiding elements for future intelligent product development: more natural, more efficient, and more reliable.

To understand the origin of this new iteration of technology, we can start by thinking about the value of future smart CPO Liu Da on the office conference headsets they have developed.

Overall, Liu Da believes that future intelligence will create the greatest value in the process of promoting GAI technology to improve the production efficiency of C-side users. First, it will equalize high-quality and high-value services at high prices through technology platforms.

For example, there aren't many people who can afford a personal secretary or assistant now, but with the development of GAI technology, everyone can have a smart AI assistant or AI secretary with real intelligence through tools (smart terminals) to help the C-side solve various work and even life problems. This is called equal rights.

The sensible entrance to GAI technology for future smart office conference headsets is called “viaim AI”. The capabilities of this portal will become the standard for all smart headphone categories in the future. Therefore, in the future, a wide variety of smart headsets will form a technology platform, which can objectively equalize high-quality and high-value services that were originally expensive.

“This is the direction of the future (intelligence) development. What we need to do is make the product eventually become the user's assistant. Like a real assistant, it has five senses and six views, can see, hear, sense, and finally complete the user's' explanation 'work.” Liu Da said, “This is also a business model we will continue to explore.”

A personal secretary or assistant, has a wide range of tasks to be done. In addition to common meeting notes, meeting summaries, scheduling work schedules, etc., the current high-frequency demand — for example, Samsung Electronics' latest flagship smart AI phone Galaxy S24 has become a popular word-of-mouth application — real-time translation, and future smart office conference headsets will also have this function.

A personal secretary or assistant, has a wide range of tasks to be done. In addition to common meeting notes, meeting summaries, scheduling work schedules, etc., the current high-frequency demand — such as the real-time translation function provided by some mobile phones, future smart office conference headsets will also have this function.

Unlike text translation on mobile phones, future translation applications for smart iFLY conference headsets will follow the “more natural” principle. The value of this for C-end users is obvious: it has real-time translation (simultaneous interpretation) capabilities — Chinese A speaks Chinese, French B can see French; at the same time, B speaks French, and A can hear Chinese through headphones.

At the same time, the Viaim AI of the iFLY conference headset has now been upgraded to bring more effective and accurate interaction: on the Viaim AI interface, language/text input problems, viaim AI can quickly respond to questions based on recorded information, making it easy for users to query conference information, which further improves user efficiency and can also effectively solve user problems.

This is the platform-level technology application capability of the new headphone products launched by Future Intelligence.

More efficient, mainly involving one-click summary of the key points of a long recording file and one-click acquisition of core points; more reliable is the security of users' personal data: that is, Catefirst. Future intelligence will use technical separation between training data and user personal data.

As for the application of users' personal data, as far as externalities are concerned, future intelligence will leave decisions to users. If authorized by the user, it can be used for figurative optimization of the application experience, and vice versa for abstract optimization.

For example: if the user authorizes, such as checking the box, it is equivalent to training the headset; if it is crossed, it is also training, which is equivalent to telling the headset, and the results are not accurate; if it neither checks nor crosses, it means that the user has no comments or may not be interested in this app.