Zhihu finally squeezed onto the AI search table

Author | Liu Baodan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

In the global competition of AI large-scale model applications, Zhihu, which originated from the community, has finally entered the arena of AI search.

On June 29th, at the 10th Salt Club New Youth Conference, Zhihu unveiled a new AI product "Zhihu Direct Answer". This product is based on real Q&A data from creators and can generate answers to user questions, marking the official productization of Zhihu's AI search function.

This is Zhihu's first independent AI product and the latest answer sheet handed in by Zhihu in the AIGC track, indicating that Zhihu is officially participating in the battle of landing AI large-scale models.

Prior to this, Zhihu had been preparing and exploring for over a year.

In April 2023, Zhihu launched "Zhihu Map AI" at the Discovery Conference, which is one of the first Chinese large-scale models in China. Developed based on the mature large model CPM-Bee, its biggest feature is that it is a model truly built on Zhihu's community text and professional knowledge graph.

With the release of the large model, Zhihu began to apply AI to specific businesses. The first feature launched for internal testing was "Hot Search Summary". In March of this year, Zhihu released a new feature "Discovery·AI Search", which enables search, real-time Q&A, and follow-up questions.

However, the above functions are still part of the exploration within Zhihu's existing products, while the released "Zhihu Direct Answer" is different. To a large extent, it is a brand new product independent of the Zhihu APP.

This product has an independent domain and service entrance, and is currently available on the PC side, accessible through the "zhida.ai" domain. Ma Kui, the product manager of Zhihu Direct Answer, revealed that in the future, "Zhihu Direct Answer" will gradually advance in app development and introduce multi-modal capabilities.

Ma Kui told Wall Street News that "Zhihu Direct Answer" is positioned as an efficiency tool mainly based on the Zhihu community and supplemented by various data sources, targeting professional and popular science users, and will be less entertaining.

In the view of Zhihu's founder, chairman, and CEO Zhou Yuan, this AI search product is a brand new productivity tool and should be a connector to discover the world. He believes that AI is an extension of human capabilities and will empower people.

The application of AI large-scale models is on the eve of an explosion, with various products striving to attract users. According to QuestMobile data, as of March this year, the user base of the AIGC APP industry has grown more than 8 times year-on-year, showing the high enthusiasm of users for AIGC.

AI search has become one of the most crowded tracks, but a clear industry landscape has not yet emerged. Domestically, there are applications such as Kunlun Wanwei's Tiangong AI Search, Tencent's Yuanbao, Yuezhi Anmian's Kimi, Baidu's Simple Search, and with Zhihu's release of Direct Answer, the AI search arena has added another competitive player.

On the international front, the AI chat-based conversational search engine Perplexity AI has attracted capital attention. In April, the company was reported to have secured a new round of financing, with a valuation possibly reaching 2.5 billion to 3 billion U.S. dollars, nearly five times higher than at the beginning of the year, making AI search the most noteworthy track With a market outlook full of imagination, this is the driving force for Zhihu to enter the AI search field. However, Zhihu is also inevitably facing fierce market competition.

In this regard, Ma Kui believes that Zhihu's core advantage in AI search layout lies in its content and data. The Zhihu community has a massive amount of high-quality content. Moreover, Zhihu has made many optimizations in large model capabilities, especially in algorithm engineering, showing good performance in result ranking, user intent recognition, follow-up question capabilities, and more.

Furthermore, the biggest difference of "Zhihu Direct Answers" lies in the fact that in addition to finding content, you can also find people, mainly referring to Zhihu answerers. In other words, Zhihu's AI search combines the triple advantages of Zhihu content, community, and creators.

Ma Kui stated that finding people is mainly linked to the Zhihu community. "There are a large number of high-quality creators on Zhihu who were difficult to discover before. Now, you can find them through direct access, directly search who the answerer is, or which field has excellent answerers, all can be well displayed."

Regarding the development expectations of AI search, Zhihu stated that the current focus is on refining the product. In the future, "Zhihu Direct Answers" will evolve in both "technology-driven" and "product-driven" modes simultaneously, becoming more powerful and user-friendly.

One exciting point to look forward to is the introduction of multimodal capabilities. Ma Kui mentioned, "Our model now has multimodal capabilities, and we are developing related functions because Zhihu's content is not just text, but also includes a large amount of images and videos."

The fierce competition of landing AI large models is still unfolding. From tech giants to content platforms, every company wants to leverage this rare opportunity to reshape the future. Zhihu sitting at the AI search table is no different from declaring war.

Zhihu is ready, and a new round of AI search competition is about to begin