Shares of Chinese search giant Baidu announced on Thursday that it would start getting AI chatbots for free on April 1, soaring as much as 11.7% in Hong Kong.

The company listed in Nasdaq and Hong Kong, according to a news report on Thursday, said users will have free access to Ernie Bot as they continue to undergo technological upgrades and reduce costs. The fee will no longer be charged to access some advanced features of the chatbot, which is based on Baidu's latest AI models. According to the statement, they include enhanced search capabilities and dialogue in multiple languages.

In the second half of 2023, Baidu began charging a monthly fee, starting at 49.9 yuan ($6.80), the premium version of Ernie. Beijing boutique investment bank Chanson & Co. Shen Meng, managing director of the company, said the free decision could help Baidu gain market share in China's competitive AI market.

The Beijing-based company was one of the first Chinese technology giants to issue services similar to Chatgpt, and Baidu reported that as of November 2024, Baidu had 430 million users. Recently, competitors such as DeepSeek have eclipsed it. It released a highly cost-effective AI model in January. It has also lost valuable partnerships with Apple's technology giant Alibaba, which reportedly offers tailor-made AI services to iPhone users in China. Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai confirmed the partnership at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Thursday.

Chatbots run by Baidu's competitors are already free, although many paid businesses and developers can access the underlying model to build services based on IT. Shen said that with increasing usage, it will lead to more data collection, so making its chatbot product for free may help Baidu better train its AI models.

However, Charlie Chai, a Shanghai analyst at research firm 86 Research, sounds cautious.

“We remind investors that Earnie Bot is still in a relatively defensive position, only lagging behind DeepSeek not only with daily active users (more than 300 million), but also Doubao of Bytedance and Kimi of Moonshot, just with Kimi of Moonshot only with daily active users (more than 300 million). .” “Unless Baidu’s products provide excellent services, providing free services in April may have limited impact on this aspect.”