NetEase Youdao launches first large model in education

As Open AI's ChatGPT takes the tech world by storm, Chinese educational technology firm NetEase Youdao launched its large model, along with up to six applications, on Thursday, which marked the birth of one of China's first large models in the education sector.

Industry experts believe that large model and artificial intelligence are expected to bring unprecedented opportunities to education and tech companies after the country's earlier regulation within the education sector.

The large model, dubbed as Zi Yue or "Confucius said" in mandarin, can be applied to various application scenarios such as translation, virtual voice tutoring, essay guidance, grammar analysis and smart documentation.

Zhou Feng, CEO of NetEase Youdao, told China Daily that, in terms of translation ability, Zi Yue has "already surpassed ChatGPT in an all-around way" and is better than most major smart translators in the market.

"The biggest opportunity brought by the large model is individualized teaching and studying, which offers students personalized analysis and tutoring while guiding them in exploring answers on their own, just like human teachers", Zhou said.

On Thursday, the company's newly-unveiled virtual language tutor Echo is a strong example Zhou's words.

Appearing on the screen via an app, Echo, with vivid facial expressions, is able to accompany users to practice English and Chinese conversations and give suggestions on dimensions such as pronunciation and grammar.

However, different from previous products, the fresh AI tutor has a certain thinking ability and is able to guide users in an amiable way to speak English.

The Beijing-based company also launched applications like AI toolbox, large language model translation and paper translation and guidance on Thursday.