Chinese search engine Baidu announced that its artificial intelligence chatbot Ernie Bot will become free starting April 1 due to improved technology and reduced costs. According to Aicpb.com, Baidu's artificial intelligence products, including Ernie 4.0, lag behind in popularity compared to similar offerings from Chinese competitors such as the Doubao chatbot from ByteDance and newcomer DeepSeek.
Baidu introduced premium features of its search engine at the end of 2023, operating on advanced models, including Ernie 4.0, for 59.9 yuan (8.18 dollars) per month, and announced the launch of extended search features, which will be available free of charge starting April 1.
"We are making our Ernie Bot chatbot free for all users on personal computers and mobile devices, starting from April 1," Baidu stated in a message circulated on WeChat. Based on technological improvements and reduced costs, the company decided to make the service freely accessible.
According to Baidu, their product Ernie, representing a large language model, has expanded capabilities for reasoning and integration of tools for providing expert-level responses. Despite Baidu being one of the first startups in the field of artificial intelligence in China after the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in 2022, its Ernie has not gained wide recognition.
The company faced increasing competition in the Chinese artificial intelligence market, particularly from DeepSeek, which offers free chatbot services with capabilities comparable to those of the American pioneer OpenAI, while maintaining lower operational costs.
