Chinese tech conglomerate Baidu has announced the rollout of a range of new AI features, including a text-to-image generator and smart glasses at its annual World Conference on Tuesday.

In a move to further enhance its AI capabilities, chief executive Robin Li unveiled I-RAG, a text-to-image generator that uses Baidu’s search engine.

The new system aims to solve the ‘hallucination’ issue of LLMs through a ‘self-reasoning’ framework that enables AI systems to critically evaluate their assessment processes.

The firm has also introduced Miaoda, a new tool that aims to help non-experienced code users by using LLM capabilities to generate code and build software applications, removing the need for coding expertise.

At the conference, Baidu’s hardware division Xiaodu also launched a new set of AI-powered glasses, rivalling Meta’s smart Ray-Bans launched earlier last month.

The Xiaodu glasses feature a photo camera allowing users to take videos and have voice interactions through a system supported by Ernie, a large language model (LLM) which has been in development since 2019.

According to Bloomberg, the glasses could be launched on the market for a lower price than Meta’s glasses, currently on sale at $299.

Li Ying, the head of Xiaodu, said at the conference that the glasses would act as a “private assistant” for users, according to a report by The Financial Times.

Li added that currently, the company’s Ernie platform receives around 1.5 billion user queries and interactions on a daily basis, including tasks requests involving text generation, answering questions, and AI- related tasks.

Ernie features a range of AI powered services, including Ernie bot, an AI chatbot service released in 2023.

Baidu, which offers a full stack of AI products, including software, chips, cloud infrastructure, foundation models, and applications, holds a dominant position in China’s search engine market and provides a wide variety of other internet services including Baidu App, Baidu Baike, iQIYI and Baidu Tieba.

Since its foundation in 2000, the company has specialised in a range of segments, including cloud computing with Baidu AI Cloud, autonomous driving, and smart consumer electronics.

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