DeepSeek is the flavour of the season. The AI model is enjoying worldwide success and has become a favourite among top tech brands. Chinese smartphone maker Honor, has announced the integration of its Yoyo virtual assistant with the DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model.
The company claimed to have become the first Android manufacturer to integrate the AI model in its devices. This will enhance Honor’s native assistant’s capabilities to complete complex tasks. Notably, the Yoyo assistant is currently only available in China.
In the previous weeks, Perplexity and Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry have also added the Chinese AI model as an on-platform offering.
DeepSeek-R1 Integration With Honor’s Yoyo Assistant
In a post on Chinese social media site Weibo, the official handle of Honor announced the integration and the new capabilities that the Yoyo assistant will now support.
This upgrade makes YOYO more efficient in handling AI tasks, improving user interaction through deep thinking, intelligent interaction, and personalized services. To utilize these new features, Honor users in China can activate YOYO by swiping up from the bottom of their device to enter the “AI agent” section and choose “DeepSeek-R1.”
As per Honor, DeepSeek-R1 will improve the virtual assistant’s natural language processing, logical reasoning, and contextual understanding of complex commands.
The DeepSeek welcome screen contains the description, “I am an intelligent agent based on the open-source version of the DeepSeek-R1, dedicated to bringing users an immersive deep thinking experience, helping users to dig deeper and gain insight into the essence in the process of exploring knowledge, solving problems, and stimulating creativity,” as per a Huawei Central report.
Also Read: Apple Intelligence Tipped To Make Inroads In China Through DeepSeek
Availability and Compatibility
Honor also announced that more than 13 crore monthly active users use the Yoyo virtual assistant. While the current rollout is limited only to China, it is uncertain whether Honor will also introduce the open-source AI model to global markets.
To use DeepSeek-R1, Honor users in China will have to visit the Yoyo smart store and find the model to initiate a chat with it. The large language model (LLM) is available for those using MagicOS 8.0 and newer with the Yoyo assistant version 80.0.1.503 and newer.
