Baidu has launched its latest foundation AI models, ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1, and is offering them free for individuals through ERNIE Bot.
The company says that it aims to “push the boundaries of multimodal and reasoning models” by providing advanced capabilities at a more accessible price point. Baidu plans to integrate these models into its broader product ecosystem, including Baidu Search and the Wenxiaoyan app, to enhance user experiences.
ERNIE 4.5, Baidu’s “new generation native multimodal foundation model,” features collaborative optimisation across multiple modalities, resulting in improved multimodal comprehension. It enhances language understanding, generation, reasoning, and memory, while also improving “hallucination prevention, logical reasoning, and coding abilities.”
A key feature of ERNIE 4.5 is its ability to integrate and understand various content types, including text, images, audio, and video. It can also grasp complex content such as internet memes and satirical cartoons, showcasing strong contextual awareness.
Baidu claims ERNIE 4.5 outperforms GPT-4.5 in several benchmarks while being significantly more affordable, priced at “just 1% of GPT-4.5.”
The model’s advancements are attributed to technologies like ‘FlashMask’ dynamic attention masking, heterogeneous multimodal mixture-of-experts, spatiotemporal representation compression, knowledge-centric training data construction, and self-feedback enhanced post-training.
ERNIE X1, Baidu’s new deep-thinking reasoning model, focuses on enhanced understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution. As Baidu’s “first multimodal deep-thinking reasoning model capable of tool use,” X1 excels in areas like Chinese knowledge Q&A, literary creation, and complex calculations.
The model’s tool use includes features like advanced search, document Q&A, image understanding, AI image generation, and webpage reading.
ERNIE X1’s capabilities are supported by technologies such as the progressive reinforcement learning method, end-to-end training approach integrating chains of thought and action, and a unified multi-faceted reward system.
For enterprise users and developers, ERNIE 4.5 is accessible through APIs on Baidu AI Cloud’s Qianfan platform, with competitive pricing structures. ERNIE X1 will soon be available on the same platform.
Baidu anticipates that “2025 is set to be an important year for the development and iteration of large language models and technologies” and plans to continue investing in AI, data centres, and cloud infrastructure to advance its AI capabilities and develop next-generation models.
See also: OpenAI and Google call for US government action to secure AI lead
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