Honor Announces Integration of DeepSeek-R1 AI Model With Yoyo Assistant in China

Honor, the Chinese smartphone brand, announced the integration of its Yoyo virtual assistant with the DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model on Saturday. The company claimed to have become the first Android manufacturer to offer the AI model in its devices. With this, the company's native assistant will be able to tap into the capabilities of the reasoning model to complete complex tasks. Notably, in the previous weeks, Perplexity and Microsoft's Azure AI Foundry have also added the DeepSeek-R1 model as an on-platform offering. Notably, the Yoyo assistant is currently only available in China.

DeepSeek-R1 Integrated With Honor's Yoyo Assistant

In a post on Weibo, the official handle of Honor announced the integration and the new capabilities that the Yoyo assistant will now support. 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.

DeepSeek in the Yoyo smart store
Photo Credit: Weibo/Honor

To use DeepSeek-R1, Honor users in China will have to go to the Yoyo smart store and find the model to initiate a conversation with it. 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.

Notably, the integration has currently been rolled out in beta, and as such, it might come with glitches and bugs that can dampen the user experience. As per Honor, DeepSeek-R1 will improve the virtual assistant's natural language processing, logical reasoning, and contextual understanding of complex commands. The company also announced that more than 13 crore monthly active users use the Yoyo virtual assistant.

The DeepSeek-R1 is a reasoning-focused model with chain-of-thought (CoT) transparency. This means users can see the thought process of the AI while it breaks down complex problems, double guesses its output and verifies it using alternative methods. The company did not reveal whether the AI model will also be able to communicate and draw information from other apps or not.

While the current rollout only includes China, it is unclear whether Honor will also introduce the open-source AI model to global markets. Notably, the Chinese AI model has faced security concerns after a cybersecurity firm found evidence in the DeepSeek chatbot's source code that links it to a Chinese telecom firm that is banned in the US. Australian government and regulators in Italy have already banned the AI platform.