Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu Inc, said on Monday that protecting user data is the prerequisite for the Chinese internet giant to do anything else, as privacy protection becomes increasingly important in the era of artificial intelligence.

“Security and privacy are the prerequisite for us to do everything else. (Services) without privacy well-protected are like ‘zeros’ without ‘one’,” Zhang said at the Boao Forum for Asia.

His comments came after Facebook’s recent user data breach scandal triggered wide-ranging discussions on what tech heavyweights should do to deliver their promises of protecting users' data.

“At Baidu, we have a very clear procedure to ensure that the data we acquire are safely protected and encrypted. That is our highest principle,“ Zhang added.