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Investing.com-- Baidu Inc (NASDAQ:BIDU) is expected to launch an updated version of its Ernie artificial intelligence model by mid-March, as the Chinese internet giant looks to further its push into the sector, Reuters reported on Thursday.
The upgraded Ernie 4.5 model will feature improved capabilities for reasoning and multimodal support, the Reuters report said, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
The Reuters report comes just weeks after Baidu signaled that it will make the next generation of its Ernie model open-source later this year. Baidu also outlined plans to make its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free from April 1, with the new model likely to be launched in the run-up to this shift.
The Chinese internet giant has rushed to capitalize on increasing interest in China’s AI capabilities after the launch of DeepSeek R1 in late-January. Baidu’s shift to a free, open-source model also likely represents a bid to increase its market share, given that the company has largely lagged its Chinese peers in garnering AI users, despite beginning investment in the sector as early as 2022.
Baidu claims that the current 4.0 model of its Ernie AI matches the performance of rivals such as OpenAI’s GPT-4.
The company has about 13 million monthly active users for its Ernie bot, compared to 78.6 million for ByteDance’s Duobao, which is the most popular AI application in China, according to January data from AI tracker Aicpb.com.
Recent entrant DeepSeek has already outpaced Baidu in adoption, with its models boasting 33.7 million monthly active users just a month since their launch.