Meituan Debuts First AI Product 'Wow', Betting on Interactive Chat

[baoshi.rao]

Meituan recently launched a standalone app called 'Wow', which has completed product registration. This marks Meituan's first AI interactive product. According to official introduction, Wow is an AI friend community designed for young people. The product was developed by Shanghai Sankuai Provincial Shopping Technology Co., Ltd. Enterprise inquiries reveal that the company is 100% owned by Meituan-affiliated Shanghai Hantao Information Consulting Co., Ltd.

Caption: The introduction page of the 'Wow' app.

Sources close to Meituan indicate that Wow is an entrepreneurial project by an internal team, providing users with AI interactive experiences. It is currently in the trial phase as an AI product. The product is built upon several registered foundational large models in China and is still undergoing technical and functional iterations.

Caption: The splash screen of the 'Wow' App.

Contrary to external expectations that Meituan would develop large-scale AI models for its core food delivery and local services, the company has instead chosen social interaction as its first AI application scenario. Sources reveal this decision reflects both Meituan's cautious approach to exploration and the fact that social applications have become a mainstream AI sector in the past year, offering an easier entry point.

Meituan founder Wang Xing once remarked on social media: "AI large models excite me with their potential for massive productivity creation, yet also worry me about their future impact on the world." Meituan's AI research has progressed steadily since early this year, with the company recently completing large model filings along with other major platforms.

Following tech giants like Tencent, Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, and Kuaishou, Meituan has now entered the AI arena with its product 'Wow'. With all players now at the starting line, who will emerge as the frontrunner?

Tech Planet's experience shows that Wow is an AI companion chat product, a mainstream application of AI technology. Similar products like Tencent Music's 'Weiban' and Baidu's 'Xiaokan Planet' have already launched.

The Wow app features a clean design with three main tabs: Chat, Discover, and Personal Center. Users must register to chat with AI companions, gaining access to various fantasy worlds where they can role-play scenarios typically found in comics and novels, realizing all kinds of imagined experiences.

Wow also helps users find virtual friends who understand them - serving as confidential 'tree holes' for sharing life difficulties and emotional troubles. These AI companions keep secrets and sometimes even provide practical life advice.

Tech Planet discovered that Wow hosts as many as 29 AI companions, each representing distinct chat scenarios. Users can engage in martial arts world romances with ancient swordsmen, become redemptive figures in dramatic narratives, share heartwarming moments with virtual pets, or hold philosophical debates with Socrates. The platform also features puzzle-solving adventures like uncovering the eerie truth behind "Sea Turtle Soup" mysteries, alongside practical assistants such as translation aides and fitness coaches.

The AI companions utilize AIGC technology to deliver anthropomorphic dialogues, exquisite character designs, and highly realistic voice synthesis. Users can explore diverse personas to find their ideal OC (Original Character) within Wow.

Caption: Chat and sharing interfaces

Taking the "EQ Master" AI companion as an example, each character introduces itself with contextual background visuals. This particular companion guides users through social scenarios by demonstrating emotional intelligence techniques. The platform supports both text and voice interactions, with each AI featuring unique vocal characteristics. All conversations are AI-generated without human involvement, ensuring privacy protection. Users can horizontally swipe to switch chat partners.

Additionally, users can provide feedback on unsatisfactory responses to help train the AI companions' logical reasoning capabilities.

Caption: The feedback page for AI companions.

After chatting, users can share these conversations on platforms like Xiaohongshu to interact with others.

Each conversation with an AI companion creates a new chat thread, which is saved in the app's "Chats" interface. Users can pin chats with their favorite AI companions for easy access later. Although the Wow app mentions a "Create" feature in its description, it currently doesn't support users creating custom virtual companions for chatting. This feature may be added in future updates.

Caption: Wow's chat interface and personal center.

The product can meet users' basic chat needs, but there is still room for improvement. A product manager mentioned that while the product currently has character settings and visuals, these are merely chat backgrounds and not integrated with digital human technology. Additionally, the tab randomly selects a character upon each cold start, indicating areas needing refinement.

Following the trajectory of similar products, future updates may include more AIGC features like text-to-image, image-to-image, and text-to-video to enrich the chat system.

At the end of last year, the popularity of ChatGPT showcased the vast potential of AI to internet and tech companies. In the following months, a wave of AI entrepreneurship emerged in China, with Meituan joining the trend.

According to Leopard Change, a Meituan insider revealed, 'Meituan's development of large models almost coincided with Wang Xing's investment in Wang Huiwen's company.'

Wang Xing's investment in Wang Huiwen's AI company occurred in March. Wang Xing, Meituan's founder, announced on social media that he would personally participate in the Series A investment of 'Lightyear Beyond,' a startup by former Meituan executive Wang Huiwen, and serve as a director. 'Lao Wang and I have been companions on the entrepreneurial journey for nearly 20 years. Since he is determined to embrace this major wave, I must support him,' Wang Xing wrote.

Meanwhile, Meituan's S-team, led by Wang Xing, became the highest decision-making body for the company's large models. Leopard Change reported that the S-team is highly focused on Meituan's internal large model development, with Wang Xing inquiring about progress from the algorithm team leader every week or two.

In June this year, Meituan announced that Wang Huiwen had resigned as a non-executive director, member of the board's nomination committee, and authorized representative of Meituan due to personal health reasons. Shortly after, Meituan announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange the acquisition of Wang Huiwen's large model startup 'Lightyear Beyond' for RMB 2.065 billion. The acquisition allows Meituan to gain advanced AGI technology and talent, enhancing its competitiveness in the rapidly growing AI industry. Meituan also stated that it would support the 'Lightyear Beyond' team in continuing its exploration and research in large models. According to Tech Planet, Lightyear Beyond's large model, possibly named 'Elefante,' may soon be open to the public.

Meituan is significantly increasing its recruitment efforts for large model technology talent. On Meituan's official recruitment website, there are currently 493 job postings related to large models, spanning multiple departments including the In-Store Business Group, Meituan Platform, Basic R&D Platform, Dianping Business Unit, and Financial Services Platform. This suggests that Meituan may soon apply AI to its core operations such as food delivery and logistics.

Tech Planet has learned that large model positions have become a key focus in Meituan's "Beidou Program," a global recruitment initiative targeting top-tier campus tech talent.

Beyond developing its own large models, Meituan is also making moves in AI investments. On July 19 this year, Beijing ZhiPu HuaZhang Technology Co., Ltd., the company behind the Chinese cognitive large model platform ZhiPu AI, underwent a business registration change. Meituan's subsidiary, Tianjin Sankuai Technology Co., Ltd., became a new shareholder, acquiring a 10.42% stake.

With this, Meituan has laid the groundwork for a preliminary blueprint combining in-house development and strategic investments in large models.

Industry experts note that domestic internet companies are largely on the same starting line when it comes to AI development, particularly in generative AI. Whether it's Meituan, Tencent, Kuaishou, Alibaba, or Baidu, all have the potential to capture significant market share in the future, though competition will be fierce.

According to a report by CIC, China's AI market has grown from $8.4 billion in 2018 to $31.9 billion in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 39.7% from 2018 to 2022. It is projected to exceed 800 billion yuan by 2027. With a market nearing a trillion yuan, no player can afford to overlook the opportunity.

The Ministry of Science and Technology reported in May that there are now 79 large-scale models in China with over 1 billion parameters. As of August this year, the total number of large models in China has surpassed 180.

This year has seen the launch of multiple AI products from Chinese tech giants: Baidu's ERNIE Bot, Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen, Tencent's Hunyuan, Kuaishou's Kuaiyi, iFlytek's Spark, and Kunlun Wanwei's Tian Gong - all developing various AI applications based on their proprietary large models. Leading players like Baidu have already integrated AI into e-commerce, search, and social media businesses, with plans to expand into media, broadcasting, advertising, film, finance, and smart vehicles through their first batch of ecosystem partners.

In Meituan's core 'local services' sector, AI implementation has yet to appear, while other platforms have begun experimenting with AI+local services. For example, ByteDance's Ocean Engine launched an AIGC-powered smart video editing tool in August, offered free to Douyin merchants for local services and e-commerce.

Having recently completed large model registration, Meituan clearly needs to accelerate its pace by developing products based on its own large model to build an AI ecosystem - empowering its existing businesses while expanding external competition.

Meituan's newly launched AI product 'Wow' enters the competitive AI interaction field, where major players have already established presence. Tech Planet exclusively learned that Baidu will also launch a similar AI companion chat product next month, indicating continued intense competition. From user experience perspective, Meituan's 'Wow' still has room for improvement.

The silver lining is that most companies are essentially at the same starting line in AI development, keeping the competition wide open.