Lanjing News, July 27 (Reporters Tang Shiyun, Sun Yu) The annual AI event has arrived, and the sweltering heat and occasional showers couldn't dampen the enthusiasm of the audience. On July 26, the three-day 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) opened its doors at the Shanghai World Expo Center.

With the theme "Sharing in the Intelligent Age," this year's conference surpassed 70,000 square meters for the first time, attracting over 800 exhibitors. More than 100 "global first launches" and "China premieres" made their debut, marking the largest scale in WAIC's history.

On the opening day, the venue buzzed with activity inside and out. As AI reshapes the world's development landscape with its disruptive power and deep integration into daily life, no one could remain indifferent.

Robots "Serving the People" Bring a Technological Spring Festival Gala

Robots were undoubtedly one of the biggest highlights of this year's conference. The entire robotics industry is experiencing an unprecedented boom – GGII data reveals that there were 87 financing events in China's humanoid robotics industry in the first half of 2025, with disclosed funding totaling 10.9 billion yuan, far surpassing last year's scale. Leading companies like Unitree Robotics have initiated listing consultations, and Zhiyuan's affiliate plans to invest 2.1 billion yuan to acquire a controlling stake in A-share listed company SWANCOR Materials.

This fierce competition was also evident in the exhibition. Last year, only 18 robotics companies exhibited, whereas this year, over 80 companies related to embodied intelligence participated. Unitree Robotics was one of the most watched exhibitors. At the event, Unitree Robotics showcased its humanoid robot G1, quadruped robots B2 and Go2. On the afternoon of the 26th, crowds gathered around the Unitree booth to watch the robot fighting competition.

During the competition, the G1 robot demonstrated difficult moves such as straight punches, hooks, and side kicks, and could quickly recover through its autonomous balancing system after being knocked down. When the robot was tripped by ropes and fell to the side of the stage, staff had to assist in dragging it to a more open area before it could stand up flexibly, eliciting bursts of laughter and exclamations of "Wow" from the audience.

Unitree's immense popularity was also apparent after the boxing match ended, as many spectators stayed to witness the robots being "stored and organized." One staff member casually patted the head of "Little Green," which lost to its opponent "Little Black" in the day's final match.

Unitree's liveliness even made the CloudMinds robotic dog resting next door look a bit "lonely."

However, staff told Lanjing News reporters that this is normal as different robots cater to different audiences and application scenarios. In terms of showcasing application scenarios, this year's conference was quite thoughtful, even dedicating a display area.

In the exhibition hall's atrium, there is a "WAIC Skills Showcase" where various products perform together like a Spring Festival Gala. In an exhibition area set up like an old-fashioned alleyway, Zhiyuan robots are writing calligraphy, playing drums, and dancing dragons; Qiling service robots are making popcorn and mixing drinks; and Flexiv Technology's robotic arms can string oden skewers according to on-site customer needs.

Interestingly, to make the products appear more anthropomorphic and engaging, the industrial robots at the venue strike heart gestures, and the cleaning robots wear safety helmets. CloudMinds' fully autonomous AI microscopic surgical robot demonstrates "peeling quail eggs" on-site, leaving the thin egg membrane intact. The booth manager told Lanjing News reporters that while peeling quail eggs is for exhibition purposes, in practice, the robotic arm could operate on a cow's or pig's eye.

The robot can perform precise surgeries that doctors perform under a high-powered microscope, with accuracy up to the micrometer level, surpassing that of top human doctors. "Its core components are all domestically produced, and its cost-effectiveness after going on the market will be ten times higher than that of imported products. Currently, there is strong demand from the medical sector," emphasized the manager.

The entire WAIC venue strives to showcase the practicality of robots, which can perform an increasing number of human behaviors and have more diverse application scenarios. The decorative painting of "serving the people" on the wall of the Skills Showcase is particularly fitting.

When AI, Which Understands Humans Best, Deeply Integrates into Life, Work, and Learning

Various large model manufacturers and technology companies brought their latest products and applications – AI is becoming the most potent assistant, covering multiple fields such as life, work, and learning.

Focusing on smart living, Midea Group's high-end AI technology home appliance brand COLMO introduced the industry's first AI butler, COLMO AI, providing immersive experiences of two major scenarios – smart kitchen and smart living room – to lead visitors into a glimpse of future home life.

During the on-site demonstration, facing the COLMO AI smart central control screen, simply saying "Hi COLMO, I'm going to cook" initiates the smart kitchen meal preparation scenario, with the refrigerator automatically opening, the range hood descending, and the lighting changing simultaneously. Additionally, Lanjing News reporters learned on-site that the smart living room can adjust lighting, curtains, and air temperature and humidity according to different scenarios such as receiving guests, sleeping, and going out. Midea is currently exploring the application of humanoid robots in four typical scenarios, including storage, cleaning, laundry, and cooking.

Lanjing News reporters noticed that the AI music creation platform "Yinchao" also made its debut at this conference. On-site staff said, "An inspiration from a sentence, an inspiration from a picture, or a casually hummed melody can bring a complete song with vocals and expressiveness through Yinchao."

Lanjing News reporters experienced it on-site. After inputting a sentence, Yinchao can generate a song within 2 minutes, fully displaying the title, lyrics, melody, etc. The generated song can be heard through headphones on-site. Staff said, "People without a musical background can create songs through Yinchao. For professional singers, it often takes nearly a month to create a song, but efficiency can be greatly improved with the assistance of Yinchao."

In the financial sector, Hengjiyuan presented a solution for AI to empower the entire business process. At this exhibition, "Hengjiyuan" brought six intelligent application matrices, including "intelligent chatbot," "intelligent text bot," "AI asset analyst," and "AI asset management system," fully covering core business scenarios such as outbound calls, marketing, customer service, risk control, training, quality inspection, and research and development.

How Far Can AI Go?

Taking post-loan operations as an example, the technical leader said, "Compliance is the top priority. For instance, in the post-loan management process, our robot will first provide psychological counseling and comfort to the customer, then clearly explain the cost of default, legal risks, and specific subsequent repayment plans." The leader explained that post-loan operations personnel often have uneven abilities, while the robot is benchmarked against the best salespeople, possessing a wealth of knowledge reserves, work experience, and even psychological skills. The chatbot is fine-tuned based on their scripts and strategies and can essentially replace personnel at the lower to middle levels.

For educational scenarios, this year's WAIC saw NetEase Youdao showcasing its domestically first AI-native learning hardware, Youdao AI Question Answering Pen SpaceOne. How can the new generation of intelligent educational products avoid fostering student laziness and activate autonomous thinking ability?

On-site staff explained that the question answering pen doesn't simply present the standard answer, and parents can also control the display of the final answer on their end. SpaceOne integrates the DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model with NetEase Youdao's self-developed "Ziyue," the country's first large educational model, which can break down the problem-solving process step by step, guiding children to "solve the problem themselves." "If they don't understand any step, they can ask immediately. Let's discuss which step they didn't understand. In this way, children are actually more willing to engage in conversation."

To date, the problem of AI hallucinations has not been completely overcome, but vertical large models can combine AI capabilities with educational scenarios and knowledge base advantages to improve problem-solving accuracy as much as possible.

However, learning itself is counterintuitive, so the large model was fed a lot of encouraging data during product design. It seems that humans may still be the ones who understand humans best.