Doubao on the Attack

Jiang Wu · 2025-03-05

*Originally published in Chinese on March 5, 2025.*

Doubao is ByteDance's AI chatbot. These are my notes on what it shipped in early March 2025 and where it is heading.

Highlights of recent Doubao updates

March 5, 2025: "Deep thinking" is live

Doubao's reasoning mode is live, covering Q&A, search, writing, and reading.
Turn on the "deep thinking" switch in the input box to try it. It thinks before answering, layer by layer, making complex problems simple.

The "AI text-selection toolbar" is improved

In Doubao's desktop version, after selecting text, you can type a question into the "AI text-selection toolbar" and get Doubao's reply quickly.

Documents from writing are saved automatically to the "AI cloud drive"

Documents generated with the "help me write" skill are saved to the "AI cloud drive" for unified viewing and organizing.

"Help me write" supports locally uploaded reference files

When using "help me write," you can upload a local file as reference material so the result fits the need better.

"Meeting minutes" is improved

The display of meeting minutes results is improved for a better viewing experience.

A new home page is live

The layout and interaction logic of the home page are refined, for a simpler and smoother experience.

The "AI cloud drive" is live

It supports document and image upload, with unlimited capacity and no speed limit.
One click runs AI parsing on uploaded content, and files are easy to manage and share.
Soon it will extend to audio and video upload and parsing, with one-click audio-to-text, mind-map generation, and AI Q&A based on audio and video content.

The "AI reading" view is live

It improves web browsing: try the "AI reading" view when reading news and articles.
Doubao skills are easier to use: get a full-text summary quickly, generate a mind map in one click, read the full text aloud automatically, and read more efficiently.

Automatic meeting notes

It beats the paid cloud meeting-note products from abroad.
A plug-in takes over voice input and output, and the voice stream becomes accumulated data.
It makes product innovations on top of existing hardware, similar to the course recording feature in Dedao's Get Notes.
The summaries and organization of meeting minutes are clear, and the technology may be the same as Feishu's underlying one.

Cloud drive

Cloud documents of unlimited capacity can be uploaded, interpreted, and reworked.
It may grow into open-ended storage space.
In the short term, because of review pressure and cost, video uploads are not open.
It is a bid for the position of personal file center and library.

Model capability in scenarios

Features such as image-to-image and imitation writing lower the barrier to getting started.
Results and content are more predictable.

Structured AI capability

AI capability is broken into individual feature points.
It may later focus on analyzing and managing user behavior data across its whole life cycle.

Product direction: from addition to subtraction

Features are added now, and later subtracted based on data feedback.
Core functions may be distilled into standalone feature points, such as search, personal data storage, assistant products, and office products.
Doubao today is a grab bag, and later it may look more like a cloud computer.

DeepSeek is growing fast and pulling away some users.
The effect on Doubao's daily actives is limited, and its entry points and influence keep rising.
Entering through work assistant is already a settled strategy.
Its future form (a browser or something else) is not clear yet. It keeps iterating and evolving.