March 16, 2025
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China's Baidu releases new AI mannequin to compete with DeepSeek
Chinese language web search large Baidu launched a brand new synthetic intelligence reasoning mannequin Sunday and made its AI chatbot companies free to customers as ferocious competitors grips the sector.
Expertise firms in China have been scrambling to launch improved AI platforms since start-up DeepSeek shocked its rivals with its open supply and extremely cost-efficient mannequin in January.
In a publish on WeChat, Baidu introduced the launch of its newest X1 reasoning mannequin—which the corporate claims performs equally to DeepSeek's however for decrease price—and a brand new basis mannequin, Ernie 4.5.
Baidu additionally made its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free for particular person customers greater than two weeks forward of schedule. Beforehand, customers needed to pay a subscription to entry the corporate's newest AI fashions through Ernie Bot.
Ernie 4.5 "outperforms" U.S.-based OpenAI's GPT-4.5 mannequin in "a number of benchmarks", whereas Ernie X1 options "enhanced capabilities in understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution", Baidu mentioned.
The Beijing-based firm was one in all China's first to roll out a generative AI platform publicly, in 2023, however rival chatbots from firms akin to TikTok proprietor ByteDance and Moonshot AI have since gained extra customers.
Baidu faces stiff competitors within the consumer-facing AI sector the place startup DeepSeek shook up the trade at dwelling and overseas with a mannequin that carried out comparably to opponents akin to U.S.-made ChatGPT, however price a lot much less to develop.
Since then, Chinese language firms and native authorities businesses have rushed to include DeepSeek's open-source mannequin into their work, whereas different know-how firms have been taking part in catch-up.
Baidu itself has built-in DeepSeek's R1 reasoning mannequin into its search engine.
In February, WeChat proprietor Tencent launched a brand new AI mannequin that it claimed solutions queries sooner than DeepSeek, even because it integrated its rival's know-how into its messaging platform.
The identical month, Alibaba, which has partnered with Apple to develop AI for the U.S. firm's telephones in China, mentioned it could make investments 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in AI and cloud computing over the following three years.
Alibaba this month additionally launched a brand new model of its AI assistant app powered by its open-source Qwen reasoning mannequin.
Baidu has additionally introduced plans to observe DeepSeek's lead by making its Ernie AI fashions open-source from June 30.
© 2025 AFP
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