The Chinese Internet -Search -Riese Baidu published a new argumentation model for artificial intelligence on Sunday and has made its KI chat bot services free of charge for consumers because the wild competition inspires the sector.
Technology companies in China have tried to publish improved AI platforms because Start-up Deepseek shocked its rivals with its open source and its high-cost-efficient model in January.
In a contribution about Wechat, Baidu announced the introduction of its latest X1 argumentation model – which the company claims, similar to deepseeks, but for lower costs – and a new foundation model, Ernie 4.5.
Baidu also made his AI chatbot Ernie Bot for individual users more than two weeks before the schedule. Before that, the users had to pay a subscription to be able to access the company's latest AI models via Ernie.
Ernie 4.5 exceeds the GPT 4.5 model of US Openai in “Multiple Benchmarks”, while Ernie X1 “offers improved skills for understanding, planning, reflection and evolution,” said Baidu.
The company based in Beijing was one of the first China, which publicly used a generative AI platform in 2023, but competing chatbots from companies such as Tikok owner Bytedance and Moonshot AI have won more users since then.
Baidu is confronted with a strong competition in the AI sector, in which Startup Deepseek shook the industry at home and abroad with a model that cost comparatively with competitors like the US Chatgpt, but cost much less for the development.
Since then, Chinese companies and local government agencies have been hurrying to include Deepseek's open source model in their work while other technology companies have obtained.
Baidu itself has integrated Deepseek's R1 argumentation model into its search engine.
In February, Wechat owner Tencent released a new KI model, in which answers were applied for faster than Deepseek, also when the technology of his rival was included in his messaging platform.
In the same month, Alibaba, who teamed up with Apple to develop AI for the US company's telephones in China, said 380 billion Yuan (52 billion US dollars) in AI and cloud computing in the next three years.
Alibaba also published a new version of its AI assistant app this month, which is powered with the open source QWen argumentation model.
Baidu has also announced plans to follow Deepseek's leadership by making his Ernie AI models open from June 30th.
