99: Xiaoxing's performance

Life ages easily, but Heaven remains young; year after year, the Double Ninth Festival arrives.

Today it is Double Ninth again; on the battlefield, the yellow flowers are exceptionally fragrant.

Once a year, the autumn wind blows fiercely, unlike the beauty of spring.

Yet it surpasses the beauty of spring; the vast river and sky are covered in ten thousand miles of frost.

In October, with both China's National Day and the Double Ninth Festival, Chen Chen couldn't help but recite a poem by the Great Man as he thought about his future wishes.

The initial sales of classmate xiao xing reached 1.6 million units, a feat rarely seen in the history of Red Star, or even China.

After nine days of rushed production and shipping, some users began to receive their classmate xiao xing one after another.

Ji Feibai was a digital review blogger with over a hundred thousand followers; simply put, he was a self-media blogger from the era before short videos took off.

The main content of his videos consisted of various digital product reviews and teardown videos.

With the increase in disposable income of Chinese residents, true digital review self-media would start to rise around 2015, but Ji Feibai was one of those first to 'eat the crab'—he had been doing various digital product reviews since as early as 2011.

To be honest, it didn't make much money; it was purely a labor of love, much like many web novel authors.

The only difference was that Ji Feibai didn't care about the small change; it was entirely driven by interest.

He was a digital tech enthusiast himself, and posting review videos online was just something to do in his spare time after work.

As a professional digital blogger, he naturally had to review the world's only so-called smart speaker.

Regarding this new gadget, he wanted to see if classmate xiao xing was as mentally challenged as Siri on Fruit devices.

He plugged it in, powered it on, and connected it to the internet, followed by a long wait for updates. With a 'ding,' Xiao Xing finished updating.

After recording his voiceprint as required by the app, Ji Feibai couldn't wait to call out, 'classmate xiao xing.'

'I'm here.'

'Do I need to bring an umbrella tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow in Shanghai will be sunny, with temperatures ranging from 23 to 31 degrees Celsius. You don't need a rain umbrella. The UV index is level 3, so Xiao Xing suggests bringing a parasol when going out.'

Oh, interesting.

Ji Feibai's question didn't seem that difficult, but it contained a certain logical trap. First, 'bringing an umbrella' could mean bringing one for a rainy day, or a sunshade for strong UV rays.

'classmate xiao xing.'

'I'm here.'

'What is your personality like?'

This time, Xiao Xing didn't answer directly. Instead, the blue light on top flashed for a second before she said, 'What kind of personality does Master like?'

A counter-question!

It was actually a counter-question. Ji Feibai was a bit shocked. He saw that the blue light on top of Xiao Xing hadn't gone out, which meant he could have a continuous conversation without needing to wake her up again.

Beyond shock, it was pure amazement.

During the launch event demonstration, they didn't mention continuous conversation; every command had to be preceded by a wake-up call.

Is this Xiao Xing's language model really this powerful?

'I prefer a gentler personality.'

'Okay, Xiao Xing will be a very gentle voice assistant from now on.'

The blue light on top of Xiao Xing went out. It seemed she couldn't maintain a voice conversation indefinitely.

'classmate xiao xing.'

'I'm here.'

'Turn on the electric fan, set the wind speed to level 2, and turn on the oscillation.'

'Operation completed for you.'

Ji Feibai gave a more complex command this time. As the Red Star electric fan in the corner of the living room started up, Xiao Xing still executed the operation perfectly.

'Awesome.'

'Siri is practically trash compared to her!'

Ji Feibai felt that 599 yuan was an incredible value. The Red Star TV he ordered hadn't shipped yet, and he didn't have many other Red Star smart devices—currently, he only had the electric fan, a power strip, an air purifier, and a few Red Star light fixtures.

Ji Feibai continued to ask Xiao Xing questions and give commands, and she executed almost all of them perfectly.

However, when he switched the language to a dialect, Xiao Xing said for the first time, 'Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying. Could you please say it again?'

It seemed Xiao Xing's recognition of dialects was still poor. However, for Ji Feibai, this was already good enough. Dialects—forget about machines—even he sometimes felt like he was listening to a foreign language when facing local dialects.

Even so, for the current time, Xiao Xing's performance was still epoch-making. In terms of consumer-grade AI assistants, she was a top-tier contender.

For the rest of the time, Ji Feibai was like a child with a fun new toy, constantly asking Xiao Xing various questions to test her performance.

On one hand, Ji Feibai was genuinely interested in Xiao Xing and wanted to know just how smart this product was; on the other hand, he wanted to record more material for his upcoming edit.

After the video editing was finished, Ji Feibai immediately uploaded it to the internet.

'The packaging of this product is very simple—just a kraft paper box with some foam lining inside.'

'My first impression of this speaker when I saw her was, well, simple. Just simple.'

In fact, this was the linguistic art of self-media bloggers. A clearly crude speaker became 'simple' in their words.

'As for the craftsmanship, how should I put it? It's mediocre, not much different from many Bluetooth speakers on the market, and even the sound quality is about the same.'

'But when I connected her to the internet and updated her, I was shocked. Look at this question I asked. Even a human would subconsciously think of bringing an umbrella for rain, but not Xiao Xing. She not only told me it wouldn't rain tomorrow and I didn't need a rain umbrella, but she also told me the UV rays were strong and I needed a parasol.'

'I asked Siri the same question, and Siri only told me she didn't understand what I meant.'

'Then I gave Xiao Xing more complex commands. She could complete commands on the same device very well, but when it involved complex commands across multiple devices, Xiao Xing only operated the first device. This still needs optimization.'

'Do you know what shocked me the most?'

'She actually asks counter-questions!'

'I asked her what her personality was like, and she actually asked me what kind of personality I liked. She can even have a continuous conversation. Of course, this depends on the language logic; in most scenarios, it can't achieve continuous conversation.'

'Now Xiao Xing feels to me like... like a person. That's right. I don't know which big shot led the development of Xiao Xing's language logic model, but what I want to express is that this model might truly be artificial intelligence—the emphasis being on the "intelligence" part!'

'Xiao Xing's voice recognition rate is very high. Basically, she can recognize Mandarin, and even a slight dialect accent. But if your dialect accent is very heavy, she'll just crash. I hope Red Star optimizes this as soon as they collect enough data.'

'Next, I will do a deep review of Xiao Xing and ask her some more difficult questions. I hope everyone continues to follow Feibai. In the next video, we will bring you the deep review of Xiao Xing.'

Ji Feibai knew that in this internet age, traffic was king. He didn't rely on these videos to make a living, but earning some cigarette money was still nice. Use a simple review to catch the eye and win the first wave of traffic, then do a deep review to attract even more.

He was now well-versed in these tactics.

And Ji Feibai wasn't the only one who felt that Xiao Xing was different from the advertisements.