(Yicai Global) Dec. 13 -- Baidu has released an improved version of PaddlePaddle, China's most popular deep-learning platform, to serve nearly 4.1 million developers.

Version 2.2 of the artificial intelligence framework was released yesterday during the Wave Summit 2021 held in Shanghai.

The Chinese search engine giant's equivalent of Google’s TensorFlow and Facebook’s PyTorch has attracted almost 4.1 million developers and 476,000 models have been created, resulting in the largest market share among China's deep-learning platforms, according to the Beijing-based company.

The tech firm revealed 10 platform developments during the summit, including a new industrial-level model library, practice examples library, the Great Navigation 2.0 co-creation plan, and a desktop version of its no-code tool EasyDL which can be installed in one minute.

PaddlePaddle exports AI technologies to various industries in a standardized, automated and modular manner to promote technological innovation and smart industrial upgrading, said Wang Haifeng, Baidu's chief technology officer. The platform currently provides services for 157,000 enterprises and institutions, the CTO added.

The open-source platform network is expected to be enlarged. Baidu has built PaddlePaddle AI industry empowerment centers in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou, and is planning to increase its presence in 15 more cities including Guangzhou and the Macao Special Administrative Region, it said.

Integrating AI and industry is becoming more and more common, said Wang. The threshold for AI development and application is getting lower even though AI is becoming more complex, he added.

Baidu launched PaddlePaddle in 2016, according to public information. PaddlePaddle supports semantic understanding, image classification, object detection, optical character recognition, and speech synthesis. Its EasyDL is applied to industrial, agricultural, and service sector uses.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi