What you need to know
- Honor is upgrading its YOYO Assistant with DeepSeek-R1 for a more intuitive experience.
- DeepSeek-R1 boosts YOYO’s natural language skills, making it more context-aware and human-like.
- The rollout started on February 8 for MagicOS 8.0+ users, but no global launch details yet.
Honor's users are getting a smarter AI experience thanks to a new partnership with DeepSeek.
The Chinese phone maker is giving its homegrown AI assistant, YOYO, a major upgrade. More specifically, Honor is plugging in DeepSeek-R1’s cutting-edge tech.
In its announcement, Honor made it clear just how massive its AI assistant has become, with over 130 million monthly active users already rocking it. That’s a huge crowd relying on it every month.
Now, with the DeepSeek-R1 model stepping into the picture, YOYO is set to gain sharper natural language skills, smarter logical reasoning, and a deeper grasp of context.
Honor is doubling down on making its AI assistant more in tune with how users think and communicate. The company is zeroing in on natural language processing to help YOYO get better at understanding the nuances of conversation. Think of it as giving YOYO a deeper, more human-like grasp of what you’re saying.
Plus, Honor is working on boosting YOYO’s logical reasoning skills. So, it won’t just understand what you’re saying but also figure out the “why” behind it.
DeepSeek’s R1 model, which took the tech landscape by storm last month, is already turning heads. This reasoning-focused powerhouse is outshining even GPT-4o in benchmark tests, which is no small feat. What really sets it apart, though, is that it’s open-source, so developers and researchers can dive in, tweak it, and build on it.
DeepSeek-R1 runs on an MIT license, meaning it’s free to use in both commercial and academic projects. Its open nature has caught the attention of big smartphone brands like Huawei, which is reportedly eyeing it for its own AI assistant.
Honor users in China can unlock YOYO’s new AI smarts by swiping up from the bottom of their device, navigating to the “AI agent” section, and choosing “DeepSeek-R1” to get started.
The integration commenced on February 8. Users in China with MagicOS 8.0 or later can access it by updating the YOYO app to version 80.0.1.503 or higher. For now, it’s a China-exclusive, with no word yet on a global rollout.
