Sogou plans to redo its input method using AI

Author | Huang Yu

In the context of the explosive growth of AI applications, more and more industries are being reshaped by AI, including the "input method" that we rely on daily.

On January 27, Tencent Sogou Input Method officially announced its full AI transformation, upgrading to the 20.0 AI major version, with comprehensive upgrades to AI voice, AI translation, and AI typing models.

Having been around for nearly 20 years, Sogou Input Method has navigated through the PC internet era and the mobile internet era, and with a user base of 600 million, it firmly holds the top position in the input method industry. Now, standing at the starting point of the AI era, Sogou Input Method must actively embrace AI to continue to stay in the game.

According to Wall Street News, the upgrade of Sogou Input Method is not merely a simple functional iteration, but a deep advancement of Tencent's AI layout in the input method sector. At the beginning of last year, Sogou Input Method, along with products like Yuanbao, QQ Browser, and ima, transitioned into Tencent's CSIG (Cloud and Smart Industry Group) to promote faster iteration and innovation of AI products.

Chai Baoquan, the product head of Tencent Sogou Input Method's AI typing, stated that the 20.0 AI major version is the starting point for the comprehensive AI transformation of Sogou Input Method, not the endpoint.

Typing capability is the core of input methods.

Shen Xiangjin, the product head of Tencent Sogou Input Method's AI typing, pointed out that within the established technical framework, there are some limitations and constraints in typing input. For example, although the vocabulary database has become more extensive, coverage of long-tail words is still insufficient, and there are shortcomings in the timeliness perception of new and trending words, as well as in understanding user input intentions, context, and semantics.

The arrival of AI large models has made it more possible to solve these technical challenges. Against this backdrop, Sogou Input Method's self-developed AI typing large model has also undergone a comprehensive upgrade, enabling it to deeply understand context and user intentions, making input across all scenarios faster and more accurate.

What is even more noteworthy is the customized services for professional scenarios. Sogou Input Method has partnered with authoritative databases such as Tencent Medical Dictionary and Deli Technology to provide unique AI customized services for professionals like doctors and lawyers, including fast input of professional terms, legal entries, and quick drug information lookup, among various efficiency-enhancing services. This means that input methods are transitioning from general tools to deep penetration in vertical scenarios.

Compared to typing input, voice input is becoming the choice of more people due to its speed and convenience. Data shows that the daily usage of voice input in Tencent Sogou Input Method continues to rise, currently nearing 2 billion times.

Therefore, AI voice input is also one of the key focuses of Sogou Input Method's capability upgrade.

According to reports, this AI voice upgrade is based on Tencent's Hunyuan-developed AI voice large model, achieving a 40% improvement in speech recognition fluency, an overall accuracy rate of 98%, and a 30% improvement in dialect recognition accuracy However, according to Rao Feng, head of AI voice algorithm at Tencent Sogou Input Method, "listening more accurately" is the focus of the first half of the AI voice competition. With the arrival of the second half, AI voice also needs to "listen more intelligently," completing the transformation from "input" to "recording," which means addressing users' needs for "expression" and "creation."

Based on this, Sogou Input Method has launched the "spoken to written language" feature. Relying on Tencent's Hunyuan foundational model, this feature can polish spoken, scattered voice input content into smooth and concise written text with one click. The intention of this feature is also very clear: to hope to become the user's "electronic mouthpiece," significantly lowering the threshold for voice input.

At the same time, to address common audio confusion issues in voice input, such as "he, she, it" and "the, this, that," the new version provides intelligent candidate replacement options, making modifications more convenient.

In the context of increasingly frequent global communication, translation functionality has also become a necessity for input methods. This time, Sogou Input Method's AI translation feature has exclusively integrated Tencent's Hunyuan 7B translation model, supporting input and translation in over 30 languages, covering various scenarios such as socializing, travel, learning, and office work.

In the WMT2025 competition held by the International Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) at the end of August last year, Tencent's Hunyuan-MT-7B won first place in 30 out of 31 language categories.

With the rapid development and application of AI large model technology, input methods, as a tool that has existed since the birth of the internet, are accelerating the expansion of AI applications in input scenarios, allowing input methods to not only enable users to type and express but also to perform tasks.

The comprehensive AI upgrade of Sogou Input Method is also part of Tencent's strategic layout for AI entry points.

Previously, Sogou Input Method had successively upgraded and launched features such as AI search, AI writing assistance, AI synthesized expressions, and image text, among which the AI expression Hunyuan image search has reached hundreds of millions of requests.

Sogou Input Method currently has over 100 million AI users.

From an industry perspective, input methods have characteristics of high frequency, necessity, and strong user stickiness, making them an important scene for the implementation of AI technology.

Chai Baoquan stated that in the future, Sogou Input Method will aim for the 20.0 AI major version, continuously enhancing users' intelligent input experience through AI large model technology and Agent capabilities. In two weeks, Sogou Input Method will upgrade its AI writing assistance service.

This means that the input method will have stronger proactive service capabilities, able to understand user intentions and provide help proactively.

The comprehensive AI transformation of Sogou Input Method marks the official entry of the input method track into the AI era. From the perspective of industry competition, the input method market has shifted from pure functional competition to AI capability competition. AI metrics such as voice recognition accuracy, translation ability, and intelligent prediction are becoming new dimensions of competition.

For Tencent, the AI upgrade of Sogou Input Method is an important implementation of its AI strategy in C-end scenarios. In the AI era, whether input methods can become new traffic entry points is worth continuous attention Risk Warning and Disclaimer

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