Baichuan launches Baichuan 4 and the Baixiaoying assistant

Background

Baichuan is a Chinese AI company. Its 2024 launch brought together a new large model and its first AI assistant, and the company presented the two together. ^[1]

What happened

On 22 May 2024 in Beijing, Baichuan unveiled its Baichuan 4 model and its debut AI assistant, Baixiaoying. ^[1][2] Baichuan said Baichuan 4 ranked first on the SuperCLUE Chinese benchmark, ahead of GPT-4 Turbo and Claude 3 Opus. ^[1]

The company reported gains over Baichuan 3 of more than 10% in general ability, 14% in maths and 9% in code. ^[2]

AI assistants of this type are usually judged on how well they answer questions, how current their information is and how clearly they show their sources. A search-based assistant brings in outside material for each reply, while a model used alone answers only from what it learned in training. Knowing that difference helps readers judge what a launch like this one is trying to achieve.

Key details

Baixiaoying put its emphasis on search, including multi-turn and targeted search. Multi-turn search means the assistant can keep refining a query over several exchanges, and targeted search means it looks for specific kinds of information. ^[3] The assistant is powered by Baichuan 4. ^[1]

Baichuan said it wanted to grow the assistant into an AI 'super app', meaning one app that offers a range of services. ^[1]

Impact

The launch shows the direction Baichuan set for its consumer work: an assistant centred on search, positioned as a possible base for wider services. Wang Xiaochuan said price wars were not a matter for start-ups, and that Baichuan planned to update its models about once a quarter. ^[4] These statements are the company's view and indicate its plans at the time, not results that can be checked from this entry alone.