China's Baidu Launches Two New AI Models as Industry Competition Heats Up

People walk past a Baidu logo outside the company headquarters in Beijing on February 2, 2024. (AFP)
People walk past a Baidu logo outside the company headquarters in Beijing on February 2, 2024. (AFP)
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China's Baidu Launches Two New AI Models as Industry Competition Heats Up

People walk past a Baidu logo outside the company headquarters in Beijing on February 2, 2024. (AFP)
People walk past a Baidu logo outside the company headquarters in Beijing on February 2, 2024. (AFP)

China's Baidu said on Sunday it has launched two new artificial intelligence models, including a new reasoning-focused model that it said rivalled DeepSeek's model, as it vies to stand out in a fiercely competitive AI race.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's roll-out of AI models which it says is on par with, or even better than, industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, has roiled the industry and re-energized the global AI race.

"ERNIE X1 delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price," Baidu said of one of the new models.

The X1 has "stronger understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution capabilities," Baidu said, adding that it is the first deep thinking model that uses tools autonomously.

Baidu said its latest foundation model ERNIE 4.5 has "excellent multimodal understanding ability. It has more advanced language ability, and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory abilities are comprehensively improved."

It also has "high EQ", and it is easy to understand network memes and satirical cartoons, Baidu said.

One of China's earliest tech giants to launch a ChatGPT-style chatbot, Baidu has struggled to gain widespread adoption for its Ernie large language model, despite claiming performance comparable to OpenAI's GPT-4, amid fierce competition.

Multimodal AI systems are capable of processing and integrating various types of data including text, video, images and audio, and can convert content across these formats.



Tesla Launches Free Trial of Assisted Driving Service in China 

15 March 2025, United Kingdom, London: Electric vehicles charge at the Tesla Center in Park Royal as Tesla car sales fall in UK and Europe. (dpa) 
15 March 2025, United Kingdom, London: Electric vehicles charge at the Tesla Center in Park Royal as Tesla car sales fall in UK and Europe. (dpa) 
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Tesla Launches Free Trial of Assisted Driving Service in China 

15 March 2025, United Kingdom, London: Electric vehicles charge at the Tesla Center in Park Royal as Tesla car sales fall in UK and Europe. (dpa) 
15 March 2025, United Kingdom, London: Electric vehicles charge at the Tesla Center in Park Royal as Tesla car sales fall in UK and Europe. (dpa) 

Tesla is launching a free trial of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) service in China from March 17 to April 16, the company said on its Chinese website.

The limited-time trial is available to Chinese users whose cars are equipped with compatible assisted-driving hardware and software, as well as the newest version of navigation maps, Tesla said in its statement to users.

FSD is a suite of driving-assistance technologies developed with generative artificial intelligence to cope with more complicated traffic conditions.

Tesla is aiming for a full rollout of FSD this year, and is working with Chinese tech giant Baidu to improve the performance of the system, Reuters previously reported.

Tesla has offered such trials in the United States, where its FSD system does not require navigation maps to be accurate or up-to-date because local training of the AI helps the technology drive better.

But in China, Tesla has been unable to train the system with data from its 2 million EVs because of the country's data laws.