Chinese Search Engine Baidu Will Make AI Model Ernie Open Source

The Chinese search engine giant Baidu announced this Friday it will release the next generation of its AI model Ernie in June and will make it open-source.

According to Reuters, Robin Li, Baidu’s CEO, has been a strong advocate for closed-source AI models, as he previously believed it was the best strategy for development. However, recent events such as DeepSeek’s arrival with a cheaper, more advanced, and open-source alternative, have made many companies and CEOs reconsider their approach.

“If you open things up, a lot of people will be curious enough to try it. This will help spread the technology much faster,” said Li at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Tuesday.

Baidu will make its AI chatbot Ernie free starting on April 1 and will transform its AI technology into an open-source model by June 30.

“We will gradually launch the Ernie 4.5 series in the coming months and officially open-source it from June 30,” said Badu in a WeChat post this Friday.

Baidu also informed that a deep search feature is now available and will be included in the free version in April.

The tech giant released premium versions over a year ago but has struggled to gain massive adoption compared to other chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or DeepSeek now.

China’s most popular chatbot is Doubao, ByteDance’s model, with almost 80 million users, followed by DeepSeek with 33 million, and Ernie with 13 million according to Aicpb.com.

Baidu also expects to launch a more advanced model, Ernie 5, by the second half of the year, as reported to Reuters by sources familiar with the matter.

OpenAI launched its o3-mini model and deep research feature for ChatGPT a few days ago for users with subscriptions.