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Chinese technology giant Baidu released two new artificial intelligence (AI) models that it touted as stronger than those of DeepSeek and OpenAI based on certain benchmarks, as the large language model (LLM) competition continues to heat up.
Baidu made its latest multimodal foundational model Ernie 4.5 and its first multimodal reasoning model Ernie X1 freely available on its website on Sunday.
Ernie 4.5's multimodal capabilities, which cover images, audio and video, outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4o on several benchmark platforms including CCBench and OCRBench, Baidu said in a statement posted on WeChat. The Ernie 4.5 foundational model's text capabilities also surpassed that of DeepSeek V3 based on several benchmarks, and roughly matched US firm OpenAI's GPT-4.5, the company said.
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Baidu was the first Chinese Big Tech firm to launch an LLM in China in March 2023 following the frenzy created by the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT. But its early-mover advantage was challenged by China's other AI players in the last two years. The search giant's latest move to increase its relevance in China's AI market came as DeepSeek has fanned an open-source wave, with Alibaba, Tencent and Bytedance galloping ahead in grabbing business and consumer users for their models.
Baidu did not provide benchmark results for its new reasoning model Ernie X1, but said that it "delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price".
Pricing for business access to Ernie X1's application programming interface (API) is set at 2 yuan (US$0.28) per million token inputs and 8 yuan per million token outputs, the company said.
DeepSeek is currently charging US$$0.55 per million token inputs and US$2.19 per million token outputs for DeepSeek-reasoner, which is powered by its reasoning model R1. The Hangzhou-based start-up last month raised its API prices amid a surge in demand.
Robin Li Yanhong, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, speaks during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Beijing on March 16, 2023. Photo: Reuters alt=Robin Li Yanhong, founder, chairman and CEO of Baidu, speaks during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Beijing on March 16, 2023. Photo: Reuters>
Baidu's founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li Yanhong said last month that Ernie 4.5 would be open source from June 30 - a 180-degree turn from his long-held support for closed-source AI development.