(Yicai Global) May 21-- Beijing-based internet giant Baidu has elevated Jing Kun, the former general manager of the smart living group overseeing the company's artificial intelligence interactive device Xiaodu, to vice president. 

Xiaodu Assistant is China's largest and most active AI interactive platform in use, local tech news outlet TMTPost said today.

Jing will double up as the general manager of SLG after the promotion and still report to Robin Li, the chairman and chief executive, per the report, which cited an internal company circular.

Jing joined Baidu in 2014, working as a manager in its search engine and AI businesses before taking the post of general manager of SLG last year. He has been fully in charge of research and development, operation and sales of the Xiaodu series products since then.

The number of smart devices equipped with Xiaodu assistants topped 275 million units as of the end of the first quarter in an almost fourfold annual rise. Voice interaction counts reached 2.37 billion in March, up over ninefold. The AI system has taken China's largest share of the smart speaker market, the company said.

Jing was formerly US based-Microsoft's R&D director and oversaw the Asian R&D of the Bing search engine. He was also a creator of the AI chatbot Microsoft Xiaoice.

Editor: Ben Armour