The AI features on Galaxy S24 phones in China are powered by Baidu, not Google

A decade ago Samsung dominated the Chinese market, but in 2023 it hovered around 2%. The leader of Samsung’s mobile division, TM Roh, has been on a quest to regain the lost market share. Earlier this week he told reporters “We are making efforts to reach Chinese consumers with products that fit the China market, through software optimisation that fits the China market, and I think the results are coming out little by little.”

This better fitting software includes the new AI features, as it turns out. Everywhere else, the translation, summarization and generation functions are handled by Google’s Gemini Pro. In China, these features are powered by Baidu’s model called “Ernie”.

Of course, Android phones in China typically ship without Google services. But Samsung is putting so much attention on AI for this generation of its flagships that this switch is a bit of a surprise.

As far as we can tell, these are the same features (in terms of functionality) that the rest of the world is getting – you can even circle something to do a web search for it, a feature that Google was pretty proud of.

Here is a statement from Samsung that was published by CNBC: “Now featuring Ernie’s understanding and generation capabilities, the upgraded Samsung Note Assistant can translate content and also summarize lengthy content into clear, intelligently organized formats at the click of a button, streamlining the organization of extensive text”.