Beijing, China - Chinese internet search giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence model on Sunday and made its AI chatbot services free, upping Beijing's competition with US tech companies.

In a post on WeChat, Baidu announced the launch of its latest X1 reasoning model and a new foundation model, Ernie 4.5. The company claims that X1 is similar to DeepSeek, but cheaper.

Baidu also made its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free for individual users more than two weeks ahead of schedule. Previously, users had to pay a subscription to access the company's latest AI models via Ernie Bot.

Ernie 4.5 "outperforms" US-based OpenAI's GPT-4.5 model in "multiple benchmarks," while Ernie X1 features "enhanced capabilities in understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution," Baidu said.

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The Beijing-based company was one of China's first to roll out a generative AI platform publicly, but rival chatbots from companies such as TikTok owner ByteDance and Moonshot AI have since gained more users.

By releasing its new X1 reasoning model and Ernie 4.5, Baidu is upping already stiff competition not only with Chinese AI models like DeepSeek, but US-made competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Baidu's models are cheaper to develop and operate than ChatGPT, as is DeepSeek, giving them an advantage over their US counterparts.

In addition, the open-source model of DeepSeek has meant that Chinese companies and government agencies have been able to quickly incorporate the technology into their work, while others are left playing catch-up.

Alibaba this month also released a new version of its AI assistant app, after in February announcing it plans to invest about $53 billion into AI infrastructure and cloud computing over the next three years.

Baidu also announced plans to follow DeepSeek's lead by making its Ernie AI models open-source from June 30.