AI giants Baidu, OpenAI offer their chatbots for free in response to DeepSeek’s advance
CNN
Chinese internet search giant Baidu will make its advanced AI chatbot services free, as competition heats up among global developers following the surging popularity of startup DeepSeek’s models.
Chinese internet search giant Baidu will make its advanced AI chatbot services free, as competition heats up among global developers following the surging popularity of startup DeepSeek’s models. Ernie Bot, the Beijing-based company’s AI chatbot with premium features like AI painting, will be available to both mobile and desktop users at no cost starting from April 1, it posted on WeChat on Thursday. Just hours before Baidu’s announcement, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the roadmap of its newest AI model, GPT-5, on X. He said ChatGPT users will have unlimited access to GPT-5 free of charge, though paid subscribers will be able to access a “higher level of intelligence.” On Friday, Baidu said in another post that it plans to launch the next generation of its Ernie Bot, the 4.5 version, by the end of June. And for the first time, it would make that edition of the chatbot open source, like all of DeepSeek’s models. It added that Ernie’s Deep Search function, featuring enhanced reasoning capabilities and expert-level responses, will also launch for free in April. The successive announcements reflect the squeeze that Baidu and other firms face in the intensifying AI race in China, particularly following DeepSeek’s recent release. The Chinese startup’s latest R1 AI model stunned the world by delivering comparable performance to US-based industry behemoths at significantly lower cost.
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