Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine company, will make its artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source to users starting June 30.
Robin Li, Baidu’s CEO, has long favored closed-source models. However, following the release of DeepSeek, the company is changing its approach to AI and going for the open-source route.
Not only is DeepSeek open-source, but it also claims to offer performance comparable to ChatGPT but with much lower operational costs. In a WeChat post, the Baidu team said, “We will gradually launch the Ernie 4.5 series in the coming months and officially open-source it from June 30.”
Apparently, Robin Li’s perspective has also shifted. At a Dubai event this week, he told attendees that open-source development could accelerate AI adoption. He said, “If you open things up, a lot of people will be curious enough to try it. This will help spread the technology much faster.”
Baidu is launching Ernie 5 in the second half of 2025
Also, Baidu is speeding up the development of its future models. For instance, an insider source told Reuters that Baidu is planning to launch a new next-gen model this year called Ernie 5.
Before Baidu’s announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disclosed on X that GPT-4.5 would be their next AI model, followed by GPT-5. ChatGPT users will be able to access GPT-5 completely free while paying customers can use it on a “higher level of intelligence.”
After ChatGPT’s debut in 2022, Baidu was the first major firm from China to make significant investments in artificial intelligence. Despite that, Ernie has not gained mass attention and adoption. For instance, in China, Ethe rnie bot currently has 13 million users only whereas DyteDance’s Duobao has 78.6 million users and DeepSeek has 33.7 million users.
To increase its share in the market, Baidu also recently announced that Ernie bot will become free from April 1, as reported by Cryptopolitan. This change applies to both mobile and desktop users of the bot.
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