By cryptoadmin 
Amid stiff competitors, Baidu says it’s making its AI chatbot free to make use of. Beginning on April 1, ERNIE Bot will likely be out there to customers for free of charge. Baidu says it would additionally difficulty refunds to customers in some instances. The corporate cited lowered prices and tech enhancements as causes for making ERNIE Bot free throughout desktop and cell.
Furthermore, Baidu plans to roll out a complicated search perform on the identical day, per Reuters. This may also be out there free of charge and is claimed to incorporate upgraded reasoning functionality.
Baidu began providing premium options in its search engine in late 2023. These have been powered by superior AI fashions equivalent to ERNIE 4.0. The corporate charged round $8 monthly (59.9 yuan) for these options.
Whereas Baidu was one of many first main Chinese language corporations to deploy its personal AI chatbot amid the rise of ChatGPT, ERNIE is claimed to have struggled to seek out widespread adoption. Against this, Reuters experiences that home rivals such because the Doubao chatbot from ByteDance and upstart DeepSeek (which provides its AI assistant free of charge) have seen stronger person adoption, based on a third-party information tracker.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/baidu-is-making-its-ai-assistant-ernie-bot-free-to-use-starting-on-april-1-153320140.html?src=rss