Baidu's largest revision in ten years: supports input of over a thousand characters, launches smart box, upgrades AI assistant

At a critical juncture in the reconstruction of the search industry by large models, Baidu is responding to the challenges of the AI era with the largest overhaul in a decade.

On July 2nd, during Baidu AI Day, Baidu Search announced a comprehensive innovation from the search box, search results page to the search ecosystem. The search box is no longer limited to an input restriction of 28 characters, but can easily accommodate hundreds or even over a thousand characters of text, while also supporting multimodal input methods such as photo, voice, and video.

The revamped Baidu Search achieves a fusion of structured and rich media at the output end, embedding capabilities such as intelligent agents and real-person services. The "Bai Kan" feature upgrade supports mixed output of images, text, and audio/video, while the "AI Assistant" adds a video call function, and the intelligent creation capability can generate a three-minute creative video from a single sentence.

This transformation comes as the AI search market is entering a rapid growth phase. According to Gartner's forecast, the AI search market will maintain a growth rate of over 20% in the next five years, with the market size reaching 347.2 billion yuan by 2029. The Baidu app has over 700 million monthly active users, and more than 35% of the search results pages on the mobile end already include AI-generated content.

Baidu Search's Largest Overhaul in a Decade, Supporting Text Input of Over a Thousand Characters

The core of this overhaul is that the search box has transformed from a simple keyword input tool into a "smart box," supporting text input of over a thousand characters. According to Baidu, the expansion of the search box is backed by significant improvements in semantic understanding and intelligent recommendation capabilities, achieving a shift from "people accommodating search" to "search proactively serving people."

The new search box has become visually larger, with a "deep search" switch added to the lower left corner and options for voice, attachments, and image uploads equipped in the lower right corner. New buttons for AI search, AI image generation, AI writing, AI PPT, and AI reading have been added below the search box, integrating previously scattered AI tools into the search entry.

Some netizens commented:

“The revamped search box is very innovative, feeling much smarter and more convenient.”

The diversification of input methods allows users to initiate search requests through various means such as text, voice, and images. The upgraded image recognition feature can intelligently analyze needs without requiring text input from users and quickly generate responses in a contextual tone

Acceleration of AI Ecosystem Construction and Openness

Baidu Search is building a more open AI ecosystem. As of now, the Baidu Search Open Platform has integrated over 18,000 high-quality MCPs (Model Context Protocols). This ecosystem provides end-users with quick calling capabilities, while business users gain technical support through zero-threshold access methods, hosting, and distribution channels.

Baidu Search has also integrated the self-developed video generation model MuseSteamer and the creative platform "HuiXiang" from its commercial R&D team. The core of this platform lies in the MuseSteamer video generation model series, which includes Turbo, Lite, Pro, and a full series of audio versions, catering to different user needs. Currently, the Turbo version is available for limited-time free public testing on the platform, while the other versions are expected to be available to users in August.

The revamped Intelligent Creation Center can meet users' video and graphic creation needs in one stop. Users only need to input a sentence to generate a 3-minute high-definition video, supporting storyboard editing and custom content, significantly lowering the content creation threshold.

Paradigm Shift from Information Retrieval to Task Completion

The Baidu research team published an academic paper titled "Towards AI Search Paradigm" on June 20, outlining the core advantages of AI search. Traditional search is essentially an information retrieval tool, aiming to "find the most relevant documents"; AI search, on the other hand, is an intelligent problem-solving assistant, aiming to "directly solve problems."

AI search has achieved a paradigm leap in technical architecture from "retrieval" to "reasoning," functioning not only as a matching and sorting tool but also as an intelligent system with planning, decomposition, collaboration, and reflection capabilities. This enables Baidu Search to expand from efficient information retrieval to complex task delivery.

At Baidu's Q1 2025 earnings meeting, Robin Li revealed that over 35% of search result pages on the mobile end of Baidu Search contain AI-generated content. The Baidu APP has over 700 million monthly active users, covering 90% of Chinese web pages through the "search + information flow" dual engine. However, facing numerous competitors, this leading search engine still needs to tackle a tough battle.

The rapid growth of the AI search market presents opportunities for Baidu, but it also means continuously rising technical thresholds and user expectations. How to improve the quality of AI-generated content while maintaining search accuracy will be a core issue that Baidu and the entire industry need to address continuously