Baidu has unveiled its latest AI foundation models, ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1, positioning them as strong competitors to OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 and other industry-leading models. In a strategic move to attract users, Baidu is making these models free for individuals through its ERNIE Bot while offering dramatically lower pricing for developers compared to its competitors.
What’s New with ERNIE 4.5?
ERNIE 4.5 is Baidu’s most advanced multimodal AI model to date, integrating text, image, audio, and video processing for a more comprehensive understanding of diverse content. The model is particularly adept at recognizing complex information, including internet memes and satirical cartoons, showcasing enhanced contextual awareness.
Baidu claims that ERNIE 4.5 surpasses GPT-4.5 in various AI benchmarks, delivering superior language understanding, reasoning, and memory—all at just 1% of GPT-4.5’s cost. The model’s improvements stem from innovations such as:
- FlashMask Dynamic Attention Masking – Improves focus on relevant content.
- Heterogeneous Multimodal Mixture-of-Experts – Enhances multimodal comprehension.
- Spatiotemporal Representation Compression – Boosts processing efficiency.
- Knowledge-Centric Training Data Construction – Improves accuracy.
- Self-Feedback Enhanced Post-Training – Reduces errors and hallucinations.
ERNIE X1: A Deep-Thinking AI Model
Baidu’s ERNIE X1 is designed for advanced reasoning and problem-solving, making it particularly useful for complex calculations, Chinese knowledge Q&A, and creative writing. As the company’s first multimodal deep-thinking AI, it also incorporates AI-powered tools like:
- Advanced search
- Document Q&A
- Image understanding and generation
- Webpage reading and summarization
ERNIE X1 is built with progressive reinforcement learning and end-to-end training that integrates reasoning and action, leading to more human-like decision-making capabilities.
Enterprise Adoption and Competitive Edge
For businesses and developers, Baidu is offering access to ERNIE 4.5 via APIs on its Qianfan platform through Baidu AI Cloud, with ERNIE X1 to follow soon. The company’s aggressive pricing and performance benchmarks signal its intention to disrupt the AI market and compete head-to-head with OpenAI, DeepSeek, and other players.
Baidu sees 2025 as a crucial year for AI development and plans to invest heavily in data centers and cloud infrastructure to drive future innovations.
The Bigger Picture
This latest move by Baidu aligns with China’s broader AI ambitions, as the country continues to push for leadership in AI development. By undercutting the pricing of Western AI models while maintaining high performance, Baidu aims to expand its influence in both consumer and enterprise AI applications.
As the AI landscape continues to evolve, it remains to be seen how competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic will respond to Baidu’s aggressive pricing strategy and technological advancements. One thing is clear—AI competition is heating up, and Baidu is making a strong play for the global market.
Sources: https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/baidu-undercuts-rival-ai-models-ernie-4-5-and-ernie-x1/, https://futurestartup.com/2021/07/08/the-future-startup-dossier-how-baidu-has-become-chinas-google/
