Baidu has introduced the discharge of two new synthetic intelligence (AI) fashions. The Chinese language expertise big launched Ernie 4.5, a basis mannequin that builds upon its predecessor, and Ernie X1, a reasoning-focused AI designed for deep considering. Notably, Baidu has additionally made its AI-powered chatbot, Ernie Bot, free for customers, eliminating any premium prices.

In its official assertion, Baidu confirmed that Ernie 4.5 is now accessible by way of the chatbot platform, whereas Ernie X1 is predicted to be out there quickly. In contrast to many AI companies that accompany new mannequin launches with a analysis paper and open-source repository, Baidu has not but revealed any such documentation. Nevertheless, it did reveal that the Ernie 4.5 mannequin will probably be open-sourced on 30 June, offering builders with entry to its supply code and mannequin weights. There was no related announcement relating to Ernie X1.

Ernie 4.5 is a multimodal AI mannequin able to processing textual content, pictures, audio, and movies. Customers can enter these codecs and obtain responses to queries associated to them. Baidu has emphasised enhancements within the mannequin’s language capabilities, enhancing its capacity to interact in conversations, reply to reasoning-based queries, and retain memory-based context. Moreover, the mannequin can interpret contextual content material comparable to satire and memes.

When it comes to efficiency, Baidu claims that Ernie 4.5 surpasses OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 throughout varied benchmarks, whereas being priced at only one per cent of its competitor. These efficiency metrics are primarily based on Baidu’s inner evaluations. Past the chatbot platform, Ernie 4.5 can also be accessible by way of utility programming interfaces (APIs) on Baidu AI Cloud’s MaaS platform, Quianfan.

The pricing construction for Ernie 4.5 has additionally been detailed, with enter prices beginning at CNY 0.004 (roughly ₹0.04) per thousand tokens and output prices set at CNY 0.016 (round ₹0.019) per thousand tokens.

In the meantime, Ernie X1 has been developed as a multimodal reasoning mannequin, that includes capabilities comparable to superior search, picture and doc comprehension, code interpretation, webpage evaluation, and TreeMind mapping. Baidu has said that the mannequin excels in Chinese language data Q&A, literary composition, manuscript writing, logical reasoning, and complicated mathematical problem-solving. It has been skilled utilizing progressive reinforcement studying (RL) with an end-to-end coaching strategy and a multi-faceted reward system. Like DeepSeek-R1, it additionally incorporates a seen chain of thought (CoT) to reinforce transparency in decision-making.

Ernie X1 has not but been built-in into the Quianfan platform, however as soon as launched, its pricing will probably be set at CNY 0.002 (roughly ₹0.02) for enter and CNY 0.008 (roughly ₹0.09) for output per thousand tokens.