BEIJING: China’s Baidu said on Sunday (Mar 16) it has launched two new artificial intelligence (AI) models, including a new reasoning-focused model that it said rivalled DeepSeek’s model, as it vies to stand out in a fiercely competitive AI race.
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s roll-out of AI models which it says is on par with, or even better than, industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, has roiled the industry and re-energised the global AI race.
“ERNIE X1 delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price,” Baidu said of one of the new models.
The X1 has “stronger understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution capabilities,” Baidu said, adding that it is the first deep thinking model that uses tools autonomously.
Baidu said its latest foundation model ERNIE 4.5 has “excellent multimodal understanding ability”.
“It has more advanced language ability, and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory abilities are comprehensively improved.”
It also has “high EQ”, and it is easy to understand network memes and satirical cartoons, Baidu said.
Baidu also made the models free to use, more than two weeks ahead of schedule. Previously, users had to pay a monthly subscription to access the company’s latest AI models.
The Beijing-based company was one of China’s first to roll out a generative AI platform publicly, in 2023, but rival chatbots from companies such as TikTok owner ByteDance and Moonshot AI have since gained more users.
Baidu faces stiff competition in the consumer-facing AI sector where startup DeepSeek shook up the industry at home and abroad with a model that performed comparably to competitors such as United States-made ChatGPT, but cost much less to develop.
Since then, Chinese companies and local government agencies have rushed to incorporate DeepSeek’s open-source model into their work, while other technology companies have been playing catch-up.
Baidu itself has integrated DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model into its search engine.
In February, WeChat owner Tencent released a new AI model that it claimed answers queries faster than DeepSeek, even as it incorporated its rival’s technology into its messaging platform.
Multimodal AI systems are capable of processing and integrating various types of data including text, video, images and audio, and can convert content across these formats.
