On February 13, Baidu announced on WeChat that it will release Ernie Bot for free to mobile and desktop users starting April 1. Ernie Bot is equipped with some advanced features such as drawing.

007ms2ii.png
Baidu has decided to offer its chatbot Ernie Bot for free starting April 1. Photo: Yicaiglobal

Just hours before Baidu's announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a roadmap for its latest AI model – GPT-5 – on social network X. He said ChatGPT users will get unlimited access to GPT-5 for free, though paying subscribers will get access to a higher level of intelligence.

Baidu plans to launch the next generation of Ernie Bot – 4.5 – by the end of June. For the first time in history, the company will offer the chatbot as open source, similar to all of DeepSeek's models.

CNN news agency commented that the consecutive announcements reflect the pressure that Baidu and other businesses are facing in the AI ​​race in the mainland after the unexpected success of the startup DeepSeek. The DeepSeek R1 model stunned the world when it had the same capacity as other "big guys" but the training cost was much lower.

ChatGPT was launched in late 2022, shaking the world, forcing Chinese giants to come up with an alternative. Baidu was one of the frontrunners in the race, launching its answer in just four months, ahead of Tencent and Alibaba. However, in terms of popularity and monthly active users, Ernie Bot lags behind its rival Doubao, owned by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.

Recently, Alibaba's leaders shared that Apple chose them to cooperate in developing AI features for iPhones sold in China after considering other AI models, including Baidu's.

In addition to DeepSeek, China has a number of other potential names such as Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI. Moonshot AI’s Kimi was the third most popular chatbot in the country after DeepSeek and Doubao in January, according to AI product tracker aircpb.com. Meanwhile, Zhipu AI was blacklisted by the US for allegedly supporting the Chinese military.

Most of the big AI language models like Ernie Bot, ChatGPT… are free for basic services. ChatGPT launched for free before adding premium features to the paid version.

In 2023, Baidu introduced paid features on the service, including generating images from text, charging 59.9 yuan/month. As of November 2024, the chatbot had 430 million users.

(According to CNN)