Baidu has introduced two powerful AI models, ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1, offering them for free on the ERNIE Bot platform to rival major players like OpenAI, Google, and DeepSeek.
ERNIE 4.5 excels in multimodal tasks involving text, images, and documents, while ERNIE X1 is designed for deep reasoning and outperformed GPT 4.5 in math benchmarks.
This bold move positions Baidu as a serious contender in the global AI race, with a focus on accessibility, cost efficiency, and advanced capabilities.