Chinese tech giants Tencent and Baidu join fight for Spring Festival spotlight

China’s Spring Festival has emerged as a high-stakes arena for artificial intelligence and robotics companies, with tech giants Tencent Holdings and Baidu committing a combined 1.5 billion yuan (US$215 million) to their digital red packet campaigns.Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent announced on Sunday that its AI chatbot app Yuanbao would give away 1 billion yuan in hong bao – the traditional red envelopes containing cash gifts. Users could win up to 10,000 yuan through lucky draws and gamified tasks on the app, with the campaign set to begin on February 1.Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng told staff at the firm’s annual gala on Monday that he hoped the initiative could replicate the success of WeChat’s red packet feature.Search engine and AI giant Baidu initiated its own hong bao campaign on the same day on its app and AI assistant Wenxin, offering 500 million yuan. Users could collect virtual cards and interact with the AI feature to win up to 10,000 yuan.The moves followed Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s cloud unit Volcano Engine securing an “exclusive AI cloud partnership” with the Spring Festival Gala, mainland China’s most-watched annual television event.Tencent says it is giving away cash gifts through its AI chatbot app. Photo: Shutterstock Images