Baidu Unveils ERNIE 4.5 and Reasoning Model ERNIE X1, Makes ERNIE Bot Free Ahead of Schedule

“As Baidu’s latest foundation model and native multimodal model, ERNIE 4.5 outperforms GPT-4.5 in multiple benchmarks while priced at just 1% of GPT-4.5.”

Baidu says ERNIE 4.5 beats GPT-4.5 at 1% of the price. The benchmarks are Baidu’s own. The chatbot went free ahead of schedule. Chinese AI keeps undercutting on price.