Social media giant ByteDance, owner of TikTok and Douyin, has launched a Yelp-like artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that recommends restaurants and provides summarised food reviews based on a user’s prompts.
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The chatbot called Tanfan, which translates to “discover meals” in English, is only accessible via the Chinese short video app Douyin, where users are also able to book restaurants and order dishes from certain eateries.
As of Wednesday, Tanfan had registered about 35,000 users, according to ByteDance data. Besides providing text information, Tanfan can also be used to compare selected restaurants and watch food video blogs.
Powered by ByteDance’s Doubao large language model (LLM), Tanfan marks the latest example of how China’s Big Tech companies are using their AI expertise to create consumer-focused applications. LLMs are the technology behind generative AI services such as ChatGPT.
The launch of Tanfan comes months after Douyin – with 880 million monthly active users in January, according to market research firm Analysys Qianfan – allowed selected users to initiate conversations with the popular Doubao chatbot, without having to log on to that AI app.
Other major Chinese internet firms have also implemented AI to help upgrade their offerings, particularly in the areas of retail, food and dining.