AI Revolution: How Chinese Social Apps Integrate AI
In today’s digitally connected world, social media platforms are not just shaping interactions; they are integral to community building, and business development. As AI continues to evolve, China’s social media platforms are at the forefront of innovation, integrating advanced features that transform user interaction, content creation, and digital engagement.
China’s social media landscape has evolved into an AI-powered ecosystem, with platforms like WeChat, Douyin (TikTok), Rednote (Xiaohongshu, XHS), Kuaishou, Weibo, and Bilibili integrating advanced AI features to enhance user experiences and create more engaging content.
These platforms have even developed their own AI large language models—Tencent’s Yuanbao, Douyin’s Doubao, and Rednote’s DianDian— leveraging platform content and resources to seamlessly address user needs.
Focusing on user-centric AI features, these platforms revolutionize
- Content Creation: Streamlining video, image, and ad generation to enhance creative efficiency.
- Intelligent Social Interactions: Personalizing and enriching real-time user engagement through AI assistants.
- Search Capabilities: Refining search accuracy and content recommendations with advanced AI models.
Let’s delve deeper and explore innovations on these platforms to understand how they are shaping user experiences in this AI-driven era.
How Chinese Social Apps Integrate AI Features
AI-Powered Content Creation
- Douyin & Kuaishou have introduced advanced video editing tools and AI-generated content features. Douyin has its own video editing app “Capcut”, which provides AI auto editing, script maker, AI avatars to help content creators quickly generate videos. Meanwhile, Kuaishou’s Kling AI 2.0 enables users to create high-definition videos from text prompts (text-to-video) or existing images (image-to-video) with unprecedented realism and creative control, allowing them to create high-quality content with ease.
Popular AI Features (left) and AI avatars (right) in Douyin’s Capcut
Kuaishou’s Kling AI’s interface
- WeChat Official Account has added an AI image feature that lets editors input prompts to generate images in various ratios, including 1:1, 4:3, and 2.35:1. Users can also further edit the image style with filters such as comic and ink.
WeChat official account AI image feature
- Rednote has launched an AI title generator that helps users create engaging titles for their posts by leveraging trending keywords and optimizing for better engagement.
Rednote can recognize uploaded images and videos to generate titles with trending keywords
- WeChat ads & Rednote Juguang ads: Both platforms use AI Generated Content ( tools, such as Tencent’s Hunyuan and DeepSeek-R1, to auto-generate ad copies, visuals, and localized campaigns. These tools tailor ads to different audiences using AI, enhancing engagement and improving conversion rates.
The Tencent Ads Creative Ads Center provides multiple AI tools to generate AIGC ads (for example: Poster generation, avatar, video generated by text, creative image generation
Rednote Juguang ads integrate AI to generate creative copy.
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Intelligent Social Interactions
- Tencent’s Yuanbao and Douyin’s Doubao allow users to chat with AI assistants as if they were friends within the app. These chatbots can engage in conversations, offer real-time answers and content recommendations and even provide emotional support, making interactions more dynamic and personalized. Yuanbao, developed by Tencent, is integrated into platforms like WeChat and QQ, while Doubao, developed by ByteDance, finds its place in platforms like Douyin and Toutiao.
These AI assistants appear in your chats, just like friends. (left) Yuanbao AI in WeChat, (right) Doubao AI in Douyin.
- Douyin plans to launch “V Project” which will allow creators to generate AI avatars that can interact with users 24/7, providing real-time engagement.
A test showing how brand AI avatars can chat with users
- Weibo & Rednote have implemented AI comment robots that automatically generate comments on user posts. While this feature aims to increase user interaction, it has also raised concerns about the quality and relevance of the generated comments.
Weibo’s AI comment robot, Luobote, interacts with user’s comments
Rednote DianDian’s AI comment robot interacting with users comments
- Tencent’s AI agent Yuanqi, an open platform designed to support the development of high-quality intelligent agents, has been integrated into WeChat official accounts. This integration allows Yuanqi to answer and respond to user questions based on the posts, enhancing user engagement through timely responses and support.
- Real-time translation features have been introduced on Weibo, Rednote, and WeChat to break language barriers, enabling users to communicate across languages and foster a more inclusive global community.
AI Search Integrated within Social Apps
- WeChat, Weibo & Bilibili have all integrated DeepSeek-R1, an AI model that enhances search and content recommendation functions. DeepSeek supports multimodal queries, combining text, images, and videos to provide more accurate search results.
WeChat AI search button (left) the search result also lists related posts from official WeChat accounts (right)
Weibo AI smart search in the search result , it also provides Weibo posts references .
Bilibili AI search button, the result references are from Bilibili content creators
- Douyin has integrated Doubao AI into its video streaming page, offering users improved search capabilities and personalized content recommendations. This helps users find relevant videos more easily and discover new content based on their interests.
Douyin AI’s Search Button
- Rednote has introduced “DianDian,” an AI assistant that answers real-time lifestyle queries, providing users with instant advice and information on various topics to enhance their platform experience. For example, during graduation season, student users actively seek ways to coordinate their graduation outfits, and DianDian can offer suggestions by referencing notes from Rednote bloggers. (see example below)
Rednote Ai Search DianDian button (left), the result also provides the notes’ references (right)
DianDian’s suggestion for the graduation outfit with reference to Rednote bloggers
cONCLUSION
China’s social media giants have turned AI from a buzzword into a utility, reshaping how users create, search, and connect. With platforms leading the charge, the fusion of AI and social ecosystems is unlocking unprecedented opportunities—and setting global benchmarks for innovation.
However, the complexity of China’s fragmented social ecosystem can be daunting. By leveraging expert guidance, businesses can navigate these intricacies and fully capitalize on the vast potential within this dynamic digital landscape.
Get in touch with us at The Egg to fully capitalize this potential.
