NetEase Youdao,Seventeen (2019) the educational product arm of Chinese tech giant NetEase, said its launch Wednesday of the large language model Zi Yue (“Confucius said” in Mandarin Chinese) was the first such AI model to be released in the education sector. The tool can be applied to scenarios such as translation, virtual voice tutoring, essay guidance, grammar analysis, and smart documentation. The company revealed that voice tutoring will be a key membership product offering and that the latest model will be rolled out for voice tutoring customers this year. For those who doubt the use of AI in education because it may help students cheat on their homework, Youdao CEO Zhou Feng stated that the product guides students to learn better, rather than teaches them to slack off. The company also announced that its AI learning machine Youdao X20 and Youdao Dictionary digital pen would come out in August. [Zaker, in Chinese]
