Chinese company Baidu has just announced that its latest reasoning model X1 and its Ernie 4.5 platform model are now available to users, provided through the AI chatbot Ernie Bot.
Chinese internet search giant Baidu announced new artificial intelligence (AI) reasoning models today (March 16) and decided to make its AI chatbot service free, amid increasingly fierce competition engulfing the industry.
Baidu launches two new free AI models to compete with DeepSeek.
Tech companies in China have been rushing to launch innovative AI platforms since startup DeepSeek shocked rivals with its open-source, low-cost but highly effective model in January.
In a WeChat post, Baidu announced that its latest X1 reasoning model — which the company claims has comparable performance to DeepSeek but at a lower cost — along with its Ernie 4.5 platform model, are now available on its AI chatbot Ernie Bot. Notably, Baidu is making the models available for free, more than two weeks ahead of schedule. Previously, users had to pay a monthly subscription fee to access the company's latest AI models.
Headquartered in Beijing, Baidu was one of the first companies in China to publicly launch a generative AI platform in 2023. However, rival chatbots from companies like ByteDance (owner of TikTok) and Moonshot AI have attracted more users since then.
Baidu faces fierce competition in consumer-facing AI, where startup DeepSeek has shaken up the industry both domestically and internationally with a model that performs on par with the US’ ChatGPT but costs much less to develop. Since then, local companies and government agencies in China have been quick to incorporate DeepSeek’s open-source model into their work, while other tech companies have struggled to catch up.
Baidu itself has integrated DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model into its search engine. In February, Tencent—which owns WeChat—launched a new AI model that it claims answers questions faster than DeepSeek, despite still using its rival's technology in its messaging platform.
That month, Alibaba—Apple’s partner in developing AI for its smartphones in China—announced it would invest 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in AI over the next three years. Earlier this month, Alibaba also launched a new version of its AI assistant, powered by its open-source reasoning model Qwen.
Baidu has also announced plans to follow DeepSeek's example by making its Ernie AI models open source from June 30.
Baidu introduced the latest platform model ERNIE 4.5 with "excellent multimodal understanding ability. It has more advanced language ability, and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory are comprehensively improved". The model also has "high EQ" and can easily understand internet memes and satirical cartoons.
Multimodal AI systems on the ERNIE 4.5 platform are capable of processing and integrating various types of data including text, video, images, and audio, and can convert content between these formats.
(Source: AFP)
Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/cong-ty-trung-quoc-ra-mat-mo-hinh-ai-moi-mien-phi-canh-tranh-voi-deepseek-19225031613135019.htm
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