Zhihu makes a big move in AI

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

The battle of large models has shifted from a pure technical competition to a race for application landing. Internet companies with scene advantages hope to be among the first to seize the opportunity, and Zhihu is one of them.

On March 20th, on "Zhihu", Zhihu's founder, chairman, and CEO Zhou Yuan released the community AI feature "Discovery·AI Search", a new product for Zhihu's C-end users.

From the on-site demonstration, this product can not only answer knowledge accumulated in history but also provide answers to the latest technological developments, enabling search, real-time Q&A, and follow-up questioning functions.

Zhou Yuan stated, "Unlike many similar large model products, the content presented by 'Discovery·AI Search' comes from community professional creators, with extremely high credibility."

Zhihu has always aimed to seize the AI trend and obtain a ticket to the new era of AI.

At the discovery conference a year ago, Zhihu released the "Zhihaitu AI" Chinese large model and attempted to apply AI to the "Hot List". The "Discovery·AI Search" product released this time is based on this large model. Compared to last year, it has an independent entrance and is more mature in functionality.

According to insiders close to Zhihu, since last year, Zhihu has been continuously exploring AI. Compared to the previous "Hot List Summary" and "Intelligent Headlines", this search product is the result of deeper thinking.

Zhihu's COO, senior vice president, and head of community business Zhang Ning told Wall Street News that in terms of To C products, the company will focus on AI search because search represents the user's mindset, and users want professional and reliable answers.

With Zhihu's continuous layout in AI, the company is also under pressure in its operations.

According to financial reports, in the third quarter of 2023, Zhihu's net loss was 278 million yuan, with a significant reason being the cost expenditure on large models.

However, Zhihu firmly believes that this investment is necessary. Zhang Ning stated, "In AI, we are willing to invest more energy, including investing more annotations in specific professional fields, such as finance or science, hoping that the answers will become more and more reliable. This is something we are always willing to invest resources in."

Currently, Zhihu's AI products are still in the exploration phase, mainly focusing on empowering and improving efficiency in business.

For example, "Yanyan Stories" and AI can generate synergies. Zhihu's vice president and head of paid reading business Fan Junmei stated that short stories will reach a scale of tens of billions in the next three to five years, and Yanyan Stories will accelerate the evolution of the ecosystem.

At the conference, Zhihu launched the "Short Story 3A Plan", where one of the "A" represents AI artificial intelligence. In the future, "Yanyan Stories" will explore the application innovation of large models in short stories in areas such as Wenshengtu, Wensheng video, and creative assistance According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2023, Zhihu's revenue from paid memberships reached 467 million yuan, surpassing marketing services to become Zhihu's largest source of income.

Zhang Ning also admitted that it is still relatively early to talk about the commercialization of AI. In this regard, Zhihu has a long-term perspective.

A good sign is that Zhihu seems to be moving in the right direction in exploring AI.

Zhang Ning said, "We started with AI search products, which users find very intuitive, gradually improving efficiency. In the future, we will look at its business model. We do not rule out using the currently popular subscription model, but it is still too early."

Currently, balancing performance growth and AI investment is an urgent issue for Zhihu.

Zhou Yuan previously stated during the release of the third quarter report that as the strategic shift towards AI-related applications progresses, the losses from large basic models in the future will also be significantly reduced.

The technological revolution brought by AI is opening up new market spaces. With the acceleration of AI application landing, Zhihu has great potential whether as a serious community or an entertainment content platform. At the same time, Zhihu will inevitably encounter more competitors.

The flip side of opportunities is challenges. The biggest uncertainty facing Zhihu is to what extent the iterative development of AI technology will change the landscape of existing content platforms and how to maintain continuous attractiveness to users.

After 14 years of development, can Zhihu rejuvenate itself with AI? This is not only a test for Zhihu but also a question that all content platforms in the AI era must answer