ByteDance's Doubao App Tests Ride-Hailing in Beijing and Hangzhou

ByteDance's Doubao App Tests Ride-Hailing in Beijing and Hangzhou

5 min read•Jun 27, 2026•
Takeshi Yamamoto
Takeshi Yamamoto

ByteDance's AI assistant Doubao has begun beta testing a ride-hailing feature within its app, available to select users in Beijing and Hangzhou. The move positions Doubao as a direct competitor to Didi and Meituan in China's crowded local services market, blending AI chat with on-demand mobility.

What Happened

On Monday, the "Doubao app taxi-hailing beta test" climbed to the top of Weibo's trending list after users reported discovering the feature. According to TechWeb, a limited number of users in Beijing and Hangzhou have been granted access to the beta test, allowing them to book rides with a one-click taxi-hailing function inside Doubao. The service is reportedly powered by ride-hailing provider Caocao Mobility.

Comparison of Doubao's new ride-hailing interface vs. traditional ride-hailing apps

Doubao is ByteDance's flagship AI assistant, launched in 2023 and now boasting hundreds of millions of users. The app originally focused on text and voice interactions, then expanded into e-commerce and group-buying—two pillars of China's local services sector. The ride-hailing beta marks the first time the app has branched into instant mobility.

How the Ride-Hailing Feature Works

Users who gain access to the beta can enter a travel request in the Doubao chat interface. The system automatically identifies pickup and drop-off locations from the natural language input, matches the user with available vehicles, and presents a ride option. The entire flow stays within Doubao, eliminating the need to switch to a separate taxi-hailing app.

ByteDance has not disclosed how far along the internal testing is, nor when the feature might roll out to all users. The partnership with Caocao Mobility—a ride-hailing service backed by Geely—suggests ByteDance is leveraging an existing fleet rather than building its own driver network from scratch.

Why This Matters for ByteDance

Doubao's expansion into ride-hailing is part of a broader strategy to transform the AI assistant from a simple chatbot into a super-app for daily life. ByteDance has already added e-commerce, food delivery, and group-buying features to Doubao, creating a one-stop shop for local services. Ride-hailing is a logical next step because it offers frequent, high-value transactions that can boost user engagement and data collection.

The move also helps ByteDance compete with Tencent-backed Meituan and Alibaba-owned Amap, both of which have integrated ride-hailing into their larger service ecosystems. Adding mobility gives Doubao another touchpoint with users, potentially increasing time spent in the app and opening new advertising and commission revenue streams.

ByteDance headquarters building in Beijing

Market Implications

China's ride-hailing market is dominated by Didi Chuxing, which controls roughly 70% of the market. Meituan, Amap, and Caocao operate as secondary players, often competing on pricing or niche features. ByteDance's entry, even if initially limited to two cities, could shake up the market by leveraging Doubao's massive existing user base—estimated at over 300 million monthly active users.

The partnership with Caocao Mobility gives ByteDance a ready-made driver network without the capital expenditure of building its own. Caocao, founded by Geely in 2015, operates in dozens of Chinese cities and has a fleet of electric and new-energy vehicles. This arrangement mirrors ByteDance's strategy in food delivery, where it partnered with third-party merchants rather than building its own logistics.

For Didi, the threat is real but not imminent. Doubao's ride-hailing beta is limited and relies on Caocao's capacity, which is far smaller than Didi's network. However, if ByteDance opens the feature to all Doubao users in more cities, it could quickly become a significant channel for ride-hailing bookings—especially among younger, AI-savvy users who already use Doubao for other tasks.

What This Means for the Industry

ByteDance's move signals a deepening convergence of AI assistants and local services. As AI chatbots gain the ability to book rides, order food, and buy products, they blur the line between "search" and "transaction." This trend pressures traditional ride-hailing apps to either partner with AI platforms or build their own AI assistants—precisely the strategy Didi has pursued with its Didi GPT project.

For investors, the key question is whether Doubao can achieve the same network effects in mobility as WeChat did with its mini-programs. ByteDance has the distribution advantage, but ride-hailing is a capital-intensive business with thin margins. Relying on Caocao limits margin potential but reduces risk.

Competitors should watch how quickly ByteDance scales the beta. If Doubao adds ride-hailing alongside food delivery and e-commerce, it could create a local services platform that users never leave—much like Meituan's app but driven by an AI conversational interface.

Conclusion

ByteDance's Doubao is taking another step toward becoming a super-app by adding ride-hailing to its growing list of local services. The beta test, limited to Beijing and Hangzhou and powered by Caocao Mobility, signals the company's ambition to embed real-world transactions inside an AI conversational interface. Whether this becomes a serious challenge to Didi or just another feature within Doubao's ecosystem will depend on how quickly ByteDance expands access and deepens its mobility partnerships.

Arizona appeals court vacates manslaughter sentence after AI video

An Arizona appeals court vacated the 10.5-year sentence of Gabriel Horcasitas while upholding his manslaughter conviction, first reported by Nytimes. The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for resentencing without the video, after judges found that it presented scripted statements as if the victim himself were speaking in court.

The three-judge panel said the video generated a likeness of Christopher Pelkey’s voice and appearance but did not reflect actual events. It found that allowing and relying on the video made the sentencing fundamentally unfair, and noted that no prior Arizona case had addressed the admissibility of such a depiction at sentencing.

The judges said a victim’s right to speak cannot override a defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate, reliable information. They said the video collapsed the distinction between the family’s belief about what Pelkey would have said and Pelkey’s own voice and opinions.

The ruling distinguishes family members speaking about Pelkey from a generated likeness that appeared to speak for him.

Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, presented the video during Horcasitas’s sentencing alongside victim-impact statements from family and friends. Wales wrote the script and said her husband and the couple’s longtime business partner helped create the video using Pelkey’s voice from a YouTube video and his face and torso from a funeral-service poster.

Judge Todd F. Lang praised the video as genuine, then imposed the maximum sentence of 10.5 years, more than the nine years prosecutors had sought.

Wales said nobody intended to make the court believe Pelkey was alive or that he had recorded the video before his death. She said she disagreed with the ruling and argued that families use slide shows, collages, hypothetical conversations and poetry to convey grief.

Wales compared the AI video with photography, saying it took 15 years of landmark cases around the 1860s before photography was widely accepted in courts.

The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing without the AI-generated video.