Baidu Launches Ernie 4.5 and X1 Models, Makes Chatbot Free
Chinese tech giant Baidu introduces two new AI models, Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1, and opens its Ernie Bot to the public at no cost ahead of schedule. The new models outperform rivals in several benchmarks while remaining highly affordable.
Chinese technology company Baidu releases two new artificial intelligence models, Ernie 4.5 and Ernie X1, bringing advanced capabilities to individual users. Ernie 4.5 serves as a multimodal foundation model that understands and generates text, images, audio, and video content. It shows major improvements in reasoning, memory, and coding compared to previous versions.
The new models compete directly with leading international AI systems at a fraction of the cost. Ernie 4.5 outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4.5 across multiple benchmarks while costing only one percent of the price. Meanwhile, Ernie X1 offers deep-thinking reasoning and multimodal features that match DeepSeek R1's performance at half the cost, excelling particularly in Chinese knowledge applications and complex calculations.
With this launch, Baidu makes its Ernie Bot completely free to the public ahead of its original schedule. The company plans to integrate both new models throughout its ecosystem, including Baidu Search and the Wenxiaoyan app. Baidu also commits to ongoing investments in data centers, cloud infrastructure, and next-generation model development.