Similar to Deepseek, but cheaper. This is what promises the technology giant Baidu, which brings a free AI to everyone.
Baidu was one of the first companies in China to launch a general AI platform in 2023. Since then it has faced the growing competition of rivals such as Bytedance and MoonShot AI… or, more recently, DeepSeek.
Now, the CNN advances, the technology giant announces its latest AI reasoning model, the x1offers a comparable performance to the Deepseek, but to a lower cost. Also launches a new base model, the Ernie 4.5.
These tools, which are free and were released two weeks ahead of expected, are available through Baidu’s conversation robot, Ernie Bot.
So far, users had to pay a monthly subscription rate to access the latest AI models of the company.
Chinese government companies and agencies were quick to integrate Deepseek software in the tools themselves, making it available to the public.
Baidu herself, for example, Integrated DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model in its traditional search engine.
In February, the Tencent, owner of Wechat, It has also launched a new AI model that claims to respond to consultations faster than Deepseek, while using rival technology for the messaging platform.
In the same month, the Alibaba It announced an investment of $ 52 billion (47.6 billion euros) over the next three years to develop AI.
Baidu has now confirmed plans to make its Open Source Irnie models until June 30, advances
