ByteDance Creates Generative AI Model That Leaves Other AI Models In The Dust. But Doubao Is Free To Download, Making Many Wonder How It Is Generating Money?

Many of us would have heard of generative AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Bard. But did you know of the top Chinese AI app in China called Doubao (豆包).

Doubao is a ChatGPT-styled conversational Bot developed by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and launched in August last year. The AI chatbot has more than 51 million monthly active users in China, outpacing other Chinese tech giant competitors such as Baidu's Wenxiaoyan (12.5 million users), and Moonshot AI's Kimi (10 million users).

The AI market in China is controlled by the government and all AI applications need to be registered before they can be made available for download in the country. For this reason, globally popular AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini has minimal presence in the country.

Doubao recipe for capturing the hearts of Chinese netizens comes from its free services and its broad range of features. On top of basic tasks like email drafting and text summarization, it supports image, audio, and video generation, data analysis, and AI-powered online searches—a capability that ChatGPT only recently introduced.

This perks reflect the founder's vision of lowering the barriers of AI adoption. ByteDance's vice president of product and strategy, Zhu Jun, who cofounded Tiktok, said

"We want our users to feel human-like warmth when using AI products."

Since its launch, Doubao has further introduced another 20 new features, including music generation, audio chat, and advanced data analysis for uploaded files.

But mysteriously, ByteDance has not disclosed plans to monetize Doubao, nor is its profit model made clear. This is especially worrying since training language model based applications often incur substantial amounts of money.

But analysts have attributed Doubao's success to the massive resources that was pumped into the project by its parent company ByteDance, both financial and human resources and talents to develop the software.

Doubao users praise its effectiveness and versatility. Cheng, a consultant in Hangzhou, uses the app for “editing and improving text” and appreciates its “logical organization of content.” Zhu Jiahui, a software salesperson in Beijing, frequently uses the app, noting its user-friendly design despite its extensive features.