At a time when AI technology is developing rapidly, Internet giants have increased their AI products in an attempt to occupy a place in this field. This article focuses on the AI transformation path of Quark and Baidu Library, and explores how they subvert their original product positioning in the radical transformation and face the impact of AI on the user ecosystem.
“Take a shot, and the answer will appear immediately, and the problem will be solved.”
On the afternoon of April 27, Quark released a new function AI camera of the AI Super Box, promoting that in all life scenarios such as travel, electrical failure, health consultation, work and study, you can take pictures of real objects and ask Quark to get professional answers.
Since March 13, Alibaba announced that Quark has been upgraded to an AI superbox, Quark has made rapid progress in AI positioning, and traditional search positioning has been completely abandoned. According to the data of the AI product list, among domestic web AI products in March this year, Quark’s total monthly visits ranked second only to DeepSeek. Among global APP AI products, Quark ranks second with 148 million MAU, second only to ChatGPT.
The AI camera further practices Quark CEO Wu Jia’s positioning as a “borderless super AI box”. In a previous interview with “36Kr”, Wu Jia mentioned: “The superbox is the interface for super agents to interact with users, and search is only one of the tools used by AI. The future will be ‘AI uses tools, people use AI’. ”
The same radical transformation of AI products as Quark is Baidu Library.
On April 25, at the Wuhan Create 2025 AI Developer Conference, Robin Li announced that Baidu Library and Baidu Netdisk jointly launched the operating system Cangzhou OS. Wang Ying, vice president of Baidu, head of the library division and network disk division, described the capabilities of Cangzhou OS: “Let AI do anything and be omnipresent in user interaction.” ”
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In addition, Baidu Library officially announced that it will be connected to Samsung’s underlying system in the form of an MCP tool. This means that Samsung mobile phone users can call Baidu library-related functions in the voice assistant interface. In March, Baidu Wenku completed its cooperation with Huawei mobile phones.
Wu Jia once explained the concept of future AI products as follows: “Humans no longer need search tools, but give instructions to AI, which thinks, executes, adjusts and delivers.” Similar to Quark’s super AI box concept, Baidu Library also emphasizes the creation of borderless AI capabilities, and Cangzhou OS integrates hundreds of AI Agents such as Baidu Library PPT, documents, mind maps, icons, and drawings, emphasizing one-stop delivery capabilities.
Behind the scenes, AI has become the main battlefield that Internet giants cannot miss, and in addition to the performance of large models, product entrance has become the focus of competition for large manufacturers.ByteDance let the Doubao chat assistant “weld” to death in the Douyin message bar, and Tencent allowed Yuanbao to be added as a WeChat friend and talk.
Alibaba and Baidu are pressed across the board. Alibaba uses DingTalk and Quark as AI to B and AI to C entrances respectively; Baidu Mobile integrates the Wenxin model and DeepSeek to upgrade to AI search, while Baidu Netdisk and Baidu Library have been restarted as AI entrances.
Among the AI products in the era of great transformation, Quark and Baidu Library have subverted the original positioning of the product the most thoroughly. While innovating the product experience, Quark and Baidu Library are also experiencing changes in the original user ecology by AI.
01 Radical transformation brings change
“Since the new version has been updated, the search has become a large AI conversation.” Some Quark users said. Since the transformation of the AI superbox in March, Quark has launched an AI search box on both the APP and WEB sides, and users’ queries need to generate answers through deep thinking mode. “Every time you search, you have to wait for the AI to come up with an answer before you can see other content.” A quark user complained.
The “City Elephant” experience found that in the latest version of the APP’s Quark search, when the user searches for a proper noun (such as Shanghai), Quark will directly display the web search results, and when the user searches for a phrase (such as Shanghai tourism), even if the “deep thinking” function is not turned on, Quark will still enter the AI thinking process for a few seconds and give priority to the complete AI-generated results, and the same is true on the WEB side.
In the past, Quark was known for its minimalist experience, but after moving towards the AI superbox, Quark’s interface began to be occupied by AI products. When you open the Quark APP, you will see functions such as AI drawing, AI writing, AI PPT, and problem-solving master. If you click on the “More” option, there are eight more functions, from resumes, college entrance examinations and even horoscope interpretations.
Baidu Library is wary of the “negative experience” that AI search may bring. On the WEB side, Baidu Library displays no AI search results, while on the APP side, when users search for document keywords, the system will still take a few seconds to think and prioritize the folded AI search results.
This may be related to the user positioning of different APP and WEB sides. For Baidu Wenku, the APP side is the focus of product growth users. Giving priority to showing AI search performance on the APP is conducive to acquiring users as soon as possible and laying the foundation of users’ AI mentality.
In addition, Baidu Wenku has launched a complete membership welfare system, which encourages members to use different abilities such as AI to generate PPT, comics, and dialogues on the basis of past library members, and provides corresponding lottery incentives. However, some users said that Baidu Wenku’s AI search results are sometimes irrelevant to the search goal, and the thinking time is long and there are many errors. Its AI features have strict limits on the number of uses, and the feeling of interrupted experience is also dissatisfied with users.
Limited by AI performance, the AI functions of Quark and Baidu Library show a certain degree of homogeneity, such as both of them use raw images, raw text, raw PPT and other functions as selling points, and also put pure tool functions such as file format conversion into member rights.
02 Each has its own pressure
If you compare the leaders of the two products, the burden on Baidu Wenku Wang Ying is not lighter than that of Quark Wu Jia.
Alibaba announced that the latest functions of the Tongyi model will be updated at Quark, and Baidu announced that the Wenxin model will be the first to be updated in the library. The difference is that Wu Jia is more of a bottom-up active reform, while Wang Ying undertakes top-down AI reform.
In March this year, Alibaba announced that Quark had been upgraded to a borderless AI superbox, and Alibaba Vice President Wu Jia reported to Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming. This means that Quark’s strategic position in Alibaba has been unprecedentedly improved.
According to LatePost, after working in Taotian for a year, Wu Jia was deeply impressed by the wide application of AI in the e-commerce industry: “AI is behind the whole site push, information flow, review, delivery, production of materials, search for corresponding products and user understanding.” ”
This may be one of the reasons why Wu Jia led Quark’s comprehensive transformation of AI. Among the leading mobile Internet products that transform AI, Quark’s transformation is the most radical and the product positioning is the most thorough.
When releasing the new Quark, Wu Jia mentioned that Quark should redo the browser, cut off the interface of the traditional browser, let AI use search, documents and other tools, and directly hand over the results to the user, and the AI superbox is the product of integrating Quark’s AI atomic capabilities.
Baidu Wang Ying’s cards are also difficult to play. Since its inception, Quark has been regarded as an important C-end business by Alibaba, and it still maintains light commercialization pressure to ensure an ad-free experience. Baidu Library has long been marginalized in Baidu Group and has maintained a high ad loading rate for a long time. “Whose member’s function is to copy text?” Open the document ad pop-up window to cover nothing. This is feedback from Baidu Wenku users.
But this also gives Baidu Wenku an opportunity, Quark has always had a good user experience due to its low degree of commercialization, resulting in a greater rebound in user experience after radical transformation, while Baidu Wenku’s transformation is relatively “natural”.
Since 2024, Baidu has begun to pay attention to the role of the AI entrance of the library, and in February, it upgraded Baidu Library to an independent BU (business unit), which is on the same level as the e-commerce division, and Wang Ying, vice president of Baidu, will continue to serve as the head of the library BU. This means that Baidu Library will receive more resource support. By September last year, Baidu transferred the C-end business of ACG (Intelligent Cloud Business Group) to MEG (Mobile Ecological Business Group) through organizational structure adjustment, and was managed by Wang Ying.
As early as 2022, Baidu has included network disks in the intelligent cloud business group(ACG),The purpose is to strengthen enterprise service capabilities,Find B-end breakthrough points。 This adjustment means that Baidu has given up B-end growth opportunities and begun to pay attention to the AI entrance role of C-end applications, and try to create a C-end AI entrance other than Baidu APP by integrating the two major businesses of network disk and library.
But in fact, Wang Ying and Wu Jia’s position and voice in the group are not on the same level. Wu Jia is an Alibaba school enrollment, and has served as the head of Alibaba Cloud Search, UC Browser Search, and Quark within Alibaba, and his management style is known for his decisiveness and radicality.
After transforming into an AI superbox, Wu Jia repeatedly emphasized that New Quark will reconstruct the search logic, guide users to subvert their usage habits, and relearn AI. In an interview with “36Kr”, Wu Jia said: “The group’s requirement for Quark has always been to achieve greater user value, and everything else is natural. ”
Wang Ying was a veteran who entered Sohu in 2000, entered the spin-off Sogou after 2010, and entered Baidu as vice president in 2021, in charge of Baidu Tieba, library, novels and other businesses. At that time, these products did not even appear in Robin Li’s OKR, when Baidu regarded Baijiahao, mini programs, and hosting pages as the three pillars of Baidu’s mobile ecosystem, and businesses such as Tieba and Library were in a marginal position.
In an interview with “Intelligent Emergence”, Wang Ying once mentioned: “Many times before I was in the business of catching up. It’s too hard to catch up, and once you fall behind, it’s hard to catch up again. Now I finally have the opportunity to let others catch up with me, something I haven’t done in my career. ”
Until the concept of large models became popular, Baidu’s strategic resources began to be concentrated on the C-end product portfolio of network disk + library. Wang Ying’s status has risen. Robin Li also publicly gave Wang Ying a platform, saying that Baidu Library is “the most thorough product of AI reconstruction”.
Compared with the radical transformation of Quark Wu Jia’s reinvention of search, the transformation of Baidu Library led by Wang Ying is obviously more cautious. When Quark released the AI super box, Wu Jia excitedly stated in the circle of friends that the new quark will use a box to open the door for users to enter the AI world. Wang Ying rarely makes similar subversive statements, only mentioning that Baidu Wenku hopes to be the starting point for user content creation.
Wang Ying also mentioned that when Baidu Wenku transformed into AI, it tested three rounds, first looking for seed users, then non-library users, and finally looking for geek users who are good at large models. Only after three rounds of testing can the product be launched.
With Baidu’s strategic turn, Wang Ying’s burden will become heavier and heavier. Robin Li mentioned in the 2025 OKR that the library should change from leapfrog development and opening up the development path of agents to accelerating growth.
In other words, the AI functions of Baidu Library have been initially completed, and the future will focus on the growth of user scale. At present, there is still not much discussion among users about Baidu Wenku AI, and document reading is still the core image of Baidu Wenku.
03 AI war is ultimately about fighting the user’s mind
At present, the current situation of the large model track is a hundred flowers blooming, and it is difficult for ordinary users to distinguish which is better and which is worse, which leads to the AI war of large factories, which is more of a battle entrance in addition to performance, occupying the scale of users first.
For Quark and Baidu Library, this leads to another problem, after the big stride of AI transformation, the original user mentality of the product is being changed.
For a long time, in the minds of some users, Quark has also been recognized by users for its minimalist ad-free experience, but AI search is different from Chatbot products on the market, providing users with more choices and possibilities。
Wang Ying once mentioned that Baidu Library is the largest AI product of MAU in China. Restarting the library as an AI application entrance certainly makes use of the original AI volume of Baidu Library. However, Baidu Library is a product of the PC era, and it lags behind mobile Internet products in terms of positioning as a whole, because of excessive commercial development, resulting in poor user evaluation, and the rivers and lakes are nicknamed “Xiaozhi.com”.
“AI companies actually use red envelopes and takeaways as the main scenarios of user-side agents, do users really need AI to help me do these things?” Some AI practitioners said: “At present, AI can only summarize and distribute online content, and the decision-making ability is not strong. ”
Quark and Baidu Library face a similar dilemma. During the user cultivation period of AI large models, the industry has obvious characteristics of B hot and C cold. Both Quark and Wenku integrate mature AI tools in the industry, such as writing, generating images, generating PPTs, etc., but they still lack a decisive killer application.
Baidu Library has tried to focus on the free canvas function, where users can drag and drop documents, audio and video and other rich media materials on a “canvas-like” interface, and use AI to generate multi-modal content. Quark hopes for AI camera capabilities, emphasizing Quark’s breakthrough progress in image recognition.
However, at this stage, the vast majority of AI agents of Quark and Library have not shown significant performance that exceeds the industry level, and it is difficult to bring disruptive experiences. The more frequent occurrences in user feedback are frequent AI hallucinations and delays caused by deep thinking, and this contradiction of “high expectations and low satisfaction” is weakening users’ trust in AI.
The transformation of Quark and Baidu Library reflects the anxiety and ambition of large manufacturers in the technological revolution. There is no way out in this battle – either it will become the C-end entrance of Alibaba Tongyi and Baidu Wenxin models, or it will become “innovative cannon fodder” under the AI wave.
