Why does Google's innovation in smart homes lack sincerity?

OFweek smart home network news into 2017, you can find an interesting phenomenon, almost all technology giants are overweight AI. At last week's annual Google I/O Developer Conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced the achievements of the past year and focused on the content. This year he did not continue to move to the mobile terminal. Instead, he changed the rudder and announced it. Google’s overall strategic thinking will shift from Mobile first to AI first, and the next work center will shift from mobile to artificial intelligence.

As a pioneer in innovation in the scientific and technological community, Google has continuously promoted its internal innovation over the past 10 years. Last year's deep learning technology DeepMind is impressive. Therefore, at the first year of Google’s comprehensive turnaround strategy, everyone expressed higher expectations for Google’s progress in the construction and progress of the AI ​​application, platform, and base layers. However, this result is somewhat disappointing.

In the combination of AI and Google products, Google Lens, whether it can make the machine accurately identify images, or Google Assistant, which can upgrade the interactive experience, or Google Home, which integrates voice interaction and smart home, is basically in the cold, there is no breakthrough. Innovation. With the evaluation of many domestic media, that is, Google is "no longer shocking" and it is no longer possible to look at the technological differences between China and the West with old eyes. China's progress in the AI ​​field is no worse than abroad.

Image recognition by Google Lens, Baidu launched 3 years ago

In the industry, it is generally believed that the future of human-computer interaction is bet on the background of voice and images. The intelligent identification of voice and images has also become the main application direction of artificial intelligence. Google’s exploration achievements in these two fields were “dumped” by Bai’an former chief scientist Wu Enda during Google’s developer conference. In the face of the former club, Wu Enda’s choice of making no hesitation in favor of the former club caused a lot of attention.

The cause of the incident was Google’s Lens image recognition technology announced at the conference. Google Lens is a visual search engine released by Google. This product integrates image recognition and OCR technology, which can use visual algorithms to identify the picture objects taken by the mobile phone and provide relevant search content. What triggered Wu Enda's bluntness is image recognition technology. On the 19th, he couldn't send a message on Twitter, saying that “American media think that Google’s flowers and plants recognition is amazing, but we must know that this technology has been very mature in China as early as 2014” and Tucao’s lag in AI applications. , and said that it is very happy that the United States has now (this technology).

You should know that Baidu, who had previously worked for Wu Enda, launched a mapping function in 2014 to recognize plants, pets, and streetscapes. At the Baidu World Conference that year, this feature was introduced to the outside world. It is based on deep-convolutional convolutional neural network technology that can meet the daily needs of users searching for information through images, including the use of image search for cognitive learning organisms. , search for HD footage, identify real issues, and many other practical applications. And at present, Baidu's image recognition tool based on image recognition and retrieval technology has been successfully applied to real life by Chinese netizens. After the 2015 upgrade, the latest Baidu readers also introduced “people. "Face making friends" and "photo shopping" are two commercial applications.

Moreover, according to media evaluation results, from the perspective of image recognition applications, compared to Google's smart chat application Allo and Ding Mi issued last year, Google's Allo will not be smarter than the degree of secret. In the understanding of the contents of the pictures on the machine, Google did not bring "new things" beyond the existing technology in China. Even Korean engineers expressed doubts on Google Lens on Facebook. Prior to this, South Korea’s largest search engine, Naver, had also launched similar features.

Google Assistant to enter the ios, still lacking

When the domestic media reported on Google Assistant, Google's assistant, the word used was very appropriate, "new bottled wine." Google’s product line is obviously a bit confusing in this matter of assistants. There are only three of Google’s current launches in the market — initially Google Sfin’s Google Now, then Google’s Allo and Google Assistant launched last year’s I/O conference.

The new progress of Google Assistant this year is that it is more open. Originally only Google's own Pixel mobile phone installed this smart assistant, this year it was opened to LG G6, and gradually opened to other third-party mobile phone brands and smart home manufacturers. The latest Google Assistant supports Google Lens, a visual search engine that is compatible with more models and languages. It also logs in to iOS as a third-party application, in an attempt to challenge Siri's rhythm.

Into the ios certainly can win more users for him, but Google Assistant wants to take this challenge or defeat Siri, it is a very difficult thing. Siri as a part of the Apple ecosystem can be launched directly through the main button and interface. The user can also directly say "Hey, Siri" to wake up, but for Google Assistant, as a third-party application, it needs to be manually activated before it can be used. The built-in core mobile kinetic energy and settings cannot connect seamlessly with other non-Google apps.

In Google's Android system, the smart assistant can say one step back. Various mobile phone manufacturers and third-party developers have begun to implant their own developed voice and intelligent interactions in an open system ecosystem. The smart 360 voice assistant launched by HKUST Feihe 360 ​​is typical.

Google Home, only software upgrades

The Google Home smart speakers released this year are only based on the last year's conference. The content of the upgrade is mainly active reminders. The user can directly obtain new notification messages through voice; it can also call out the phone by saying the name of the contact person; at the same time, the speaker can also directly display information to mobile phones and televisions.

However, Google Home still "follows the late set" compared to competing Amazon Echo. Amazon’s Echo has gone through several iterations and has already accounted for 70% of the market. At the entrance to the AI ​​application family, it is clear that Google has not yet formed an advantage. In view of the sound layout and development of Google's AI ecosystem in the future, this short board needs to be quickly filled.

We can see that in the area of ​​artificial intelligence, Google has lagged behind direct/indirect competitors in terms of image recognition, smart assistant applications, smart speaker layout, and home entrance. The main problem is that Google's prediction of the strategic significance of artificial intelligence is biased. Although Google formed the Google brain team in 2010, it did not pay much attention to AI.

Compared with Google's slowness in the strategic focus, Baidu in the Chinese market has long considered artificial intelligence as Baidu’s most important direction. Baidu established the Institute of Deep Learning as early as July 2013. The driverless project was also launched in the same period. In the first half of last year, Baidu clearly proposed to establish artificial intelligence as the future development direction. According to incomplete statistics, Li Yanhong mentioned 513 artificial intelligence in public in last year. This year, Baidu also put forward the "AI pioneering" strategy, which regards artificial intelligence as the core of every business in the future, not only to promote the core business of AI empowerment, but also to open up new AI ecosystems.

The internationally-recognized media Asia Times recently published an article saying that Asian companies are competing to develop and apply artificial intelligence technologies. Chinese Internet companies are pressing harder and harder on US technology companies in California's Silicon Valley. In the AI ​​field, the technological gap has been shown to shrink further and even surpass Google in some respects.