To show that the launch of DeepSeek can fundamentally change the AI industry, Baidu, China's largest search engine, announced it will get its generated AI Chatbot Ernie for free.
Baidu said in a WeChat message on Thursday that starting April 1, all users on desktop and mobile platforms will not need to access Ernie Bot.
It believes that improved technology and lower costs are driving force behind its relocation.
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Baidu is one of China’s first moves in AI after Openai’s Chatgpt debut in 2022. Until the launch of DeepSeek last month, Ernie Bot was widely regarded as the closest Chinese rival to Chatgpt.
The company has Said before The latest version of the platform, Ernie 4.0, matches OpenAI's GPT-4 capabilities.
But while Genai Chatbot handles 1.5 billion user queries and interactions, Baidu’s biggest challenge is that despite its ernie Big Language Model (LLM) gaining widespread adoption.
According to AICPB.com, in terms of user adoption, Baidu's AI products lag behind domestic competitors such as Bytedance's Doubao Chatbot and Newcomer DeepSeek.
Baidu's struggle demonstrates rapid competition in China's artificial intelligence sector. Last year, the industry witnessed Fierce price war With the cuts of Baidu and its close rivals Alibaba and the Beast, the price of LLM used to generate artificial intelligence products has been cut.
At that time, Baidu used its Ernie Speed and Ernie Lite models for free for all corporate users.
The company revealed November Last year, the focus is now shifting to the commercialization of LLM applications. One of its products is I-rag – a text-to-image technology that uses Baidu's search capabilities to solve AI “idolation” problems.
Baidu also launched Miaoda, which utilizes its LLM capabilities to generate code, allowing users to develop software applications without extensive coding expertise.
Early this week, CNBC Report Baidu also plans to launch its next iteration of Ernie Bot in the second half of 2025.
CNBC reported that the new model Ernie 5 will have multimodal capabilities that enable it to process and convert between different formats, including text, video, images and audio, and quote sources familiar with the matter.
- Reuters, and other editors and inputs from Vishakha Saxena
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