China's Baidu to make latest Ernie AI model open-source as competition heats up

Chinese search engine giant Baidu (9888) said on Friday it would make its next-generation artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30, a major shift in strategy as competition heats up.

Baidu chief executive Robin Li Yanhong had long advocated for closed-source models as the only viable path for AI development, but the advent of DeepSeek has upended the sector. The startup offers open-source AI services that it claims are comparable in performance to U.S. pioneer OpenAI's advanced systems but come with a lower operational cost.

Keen to increase market share, Baidu also announced on Thursday that it would make its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free starting April 1, about a year and a half after introducing premium versions.

Baidu was among the first big Chinese companies to invest heavily in AI following the 2022 debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT. However, its Ernie large language model has struggled to gain widespread adoption. Baidu has said its current version, Ernie 4.0, matches OpenAI's GPT-4 capabilities.