ERNIE AI: Baidu’s ERNIE 4.5 & X1 - Free, Advanced, Multimodal AI

Introduction

Ernie Bot is an advanced artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Chinese tech company Baidu. It is built on Baidu’s ERNIE family of large language models, designed to understand and generate language across text, images, audio, and video.

Because of its multimodal capabilities and improved reasoning, Ernie Bot reflects China’s efforts to compete with major global AI systems and to expand access to AI technology worldwide.

In this article, you will learn how Baidu’s ERNIE models have grown and what ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 do. You will also see how the Baidu chatbot enables users to leverage these models and what comes next for ERNIE AI.

The Evolution of Baidu’s ERNIE Series

Baidu’s ERNIE models have developed steadily from early language representation models to advanced multimodal and reasoning systems. Let’s look at how ERNIE evolved:

• Origins of ERNIE

Baidu started developing ERNIE large language models in 2019, long before the Baidu chatbot launched. ERNIE, which stands for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, was designed to improve natural language understanding by incorporating structured knowledge into pre-training.

Early models used entity-level and phrase-level masking to help the AI understand context beyond individual words, giving it an edge over traditional language models.

• Milestones Leading to ERNIE 4.5

Baidu has been systematically developing and enlarging the ERNIE model. With each new version, the models moved from processing text only to handling a wider range of data, including images, audio, and video.

The release of ERNIE 4.5 in 2025 incorporated multimodal foundation capabilities and significantly improved reasoning, enabling the model to quickly and accurately interpret and connect diverse inputs.

• Positioning Against Global LLM Benchmarks

The ERNIE models were evaluated across various global benchmarks and demonstrated competitive performance against leading large language models. Their multimodal nature and reasoning capabilities make them a strong contender in AI research, particularly in scenarios where unstructured data is combined with structured knowledge.

In case you didn’t know, by mid‑2025, Baidu's Ernie Bot had over 300 million users who had tried the service, with over 200 million daily queries, making it a dominant force in China's AI chatbot market [reported by Data Studios].

ERNIE 4.5 Explained

Apart from the evolution of ERNIE models, let’s look at the key capabilities, strengths, and use cases of ERNIE 4.5:

• What Makes ERNIE 4.5 Unique

ERNIE 4.5 is built on a native multimodal architecture that processes text, images, audio, and video together rather than separately. The model family uses a Mixture‑of‑Experts (MoE) strategy, meaning only a fraction of the model’s total parameters are activated for each input, improving efficiency and scalability.

For example, some ERNIE 4.5 variants activate approximately 47 billion parameters per token out of a total of 424 billion, enabling the model to process various data types efficiently.

• Key Capabilities and Strengths

ERNIE 4.5's multimodal reasoning capabilities have been significantly enhanced, making it an effective tool for interpreting text-and-image documents, performing optical character recognition (OCR), and analyzing charts, among other tasks.

It performs competitively or better than other large models on benchmark tests across categories such as reasoning, world knowledge, and visual question answering. (Source: X)

Additionally, its strong performance on Chinese-language tasks and math benchmarks indicates it excels in these areas, while some global competitors may not perform as well.

• Use Cases for ERNIE 4.5

ERNIE 4.5's design makes it suitable for a wide range of applications. Developers can work with it via Baidu AI Studio and Hugging Face, enabling its integration into AI systems for applications such as chatbots, document processing, and multimodal workflows.

Baidu also offers enterprise APIs through its Qianfan platform, enabling businesses to integrate ERNIE 4.5 into commercial products and services that require advanced language and vision understanding.

Before you scroll, here’s ERNIE 4.5 in action 👇

ERNIE X1: The Next Frontier of Deep Thinking AI

Ernie X1 builds on ERNIE 4.5 and focuses more on reasoning and problem-solving. Here’s what it offers:

• What ERNIE X1 Brings to the Table?

ERNIE X1 is a reasoning-centric model that processes text, images, and other information simultaneously. Its main features include planning, logical reasoning, and complex calculations, making it well-suited for roles that require not only text generation but also high-level cognitive activity and structured analysis.

• Benchmark Positioning and Market Role

ERNIE X1's performance on reasoning and multimodal tasks is a strong point, demonstrating high accuracy in planning, logical analysis, and interpreting text alongside images.

Later versions, such as X1.1, have improved not only factual accuracy but also instruction-following, making them suitable for both research and applied areas of AI.

• Practical Applications for X1

ERNIE X1 can be used in Q&A systems, literature generation, deep dialogue, and code interpretation, supporting both enterprise and consumer use cases.

Enterprises can integrate it into workflows that require advanced reasoning, while consumer-facing applications benefit from its ability to understand context and provide complex, accurate responses.

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Ernie Bot: Free Access to Cutting-Edge AI

If you are wondering how to use ERNIE AI and where Baidu offers access without charge, here is how you can get started:

• How to Access ERNIE AI for Free?

Baidu decided to make Ernie Bot free for individual users ahead of schedule, giving anyone the chance to use its advanced AI models without a subscription. You can access it directly through the official Baidu chatbot website on both web and mobile platforms, where the latest ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 models are available for general use.

For software developers and enterprise users, APIs are provided through Baidu AI Cloud’s Qianfan platform, starting with ERNIE 4.5 today and extending to X1 soon.

• What Users Can Do With Free ERNIE?

With free access to ERNIE Bot, users can interact for typical conversational AI tasks, such as asking questions, generating text, and receiving information in dialogue form. The platform also supports multimodal input, allowing users to provide images alongside text and receive meaningful responses.

This makes it a valuable tool for real‑world needs like summarizing content, interpreting visuals, generating creative passages, and exploring examples across different media types.

Insight drop: Baidu's PaddlePaddle‑ERNIE ecosystem now serves 23.33 million developers and 760,000 enterprises as of September 2025, reflecting the broad integration of ERNIE X1 models [from Stock Insight].

A quick dashboard snapshot from ERNIE Bot:

Open Source Strategy and Developer Impact

By now, you’ve seen how ERNIE has evolved and what its latest versions can do. Next, it’s worth examining how Baidu’s open‑source approach is shaping development and broader adoption.

• Open‑Source Release of ERNIE Models

In mid‑2025, Baidu made the ERNIE 4.5 family of models publicly available under the Apache 2.0 license, a permissive open‑source license that allows developers and researchers to use, modify, and deploy the models even for commercial purposes.

This release comprises ERNIE 4.5 variants of various sizes, from compact versions to large mixture-of-experts architectures, and is available on public repositories such as Hugging Face and GitHub. The decision to open-source these models represents a change in Baidu's approach towards wider accessibility and trial.

• Tools and Support for Developers

Alongside open-sourcing the models themselves, Baidu has also provided supporting tools and infrastructure to help developers work with ERNIE. Toolkits such as ERNIEKit and deployment frameworks such as FastDeploy are part of this effort, offering capabilities for fine‑tuning, efficient inference, and multi‑hardware support. (Source: GitHub)

These resources simplify application development, custom workflow creation, and ERNIE integration within existing systems.

• Impact on Innovation and Community

Opening up the ERNIE model family has lowered barriers for developers and researchers who want to explore advanced AI capabilities. With open access, more people can experiment with multimodal gen AI and reasoning‑focused models, build new tools, and contribute improvements back to the community.

This shift also aligns Baidu with broader industry trends where open‑source AI fosters shared progress and wider adoption.

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ERNIE AI vs Global Competitors

Apart from its features and community impact, it helps to compare Baidu Ernie with other leading models from around the world:

• ERNIE 4.5 vs GPT‑4.5 and GPT‑4o

ERNIE 4.5 holds up well against advanced models from OpenAI. In multimodal tests (where the model handles both text and images), ERNIE 4.5 scored 77.77% as compared to GPT‑4o’s 73.92%, showing strength in tasks like visual reasoning and document question answering.

On text-only benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 averaged about 79.6, slightly ahead of GPT‑4.5’s 79.14 on overall accuracy. ERNIE also performs particularly strongly on Chinese-language reasoning tests, outperforming GPT‑4.5 by a noticeable margin.

• ERNIE X1 vs DeepSeek R1

Baidu has positioned ERNIE X1 to match DeepSeek’s R1 model on reasoning‑focused tasks at a much lower operating cost. Reports by Dataconomy indicate that ERNIE X1 aims to match DeepSeek R1's performance while running at roughly half the price per token, making it attractive where cost efficiency is a priority.

Benchmark check: who’s leading today?

• How ERNIE AI Fits Among Other Global Models

Across the broader field of large language models, there is no single dominant model for every use case, but Baidu Ernie stands out in several areas. Its multimodal scores indicate strong cross‑format understanding, while its benchmark results place it competitively with systems such as DeepSeek V3 and other high‑profile models. (Source: Kingy AI)

At the same time, some specialized models may still lead in tasks such as coding benchmarks or ultra‑specific reasoning workloads, but ERNIE’s mix of performance and cost positions it as a solid contender among global AI systems.

Future Roadmap for ERNIE AI

Looking ahead to the future of ERNIE AI, here is what Baidu has planned next and where the technology is headed.

• Subsequent Iterations Like ERNIE X1.1 and Beyond

Baidu continues to build on the success of ERNIE X1 with incremental updates focused on reasoning, factual accuracy, and agent‑like capabilities. In late 2025, the company introduced ERNIE X1.1, which delivers improved factual performance and stronger instruction-following compared with its predecessor.

According to PR Newswire, this iteration improves performance on core reasoning tasks, delivering higher accuracy and more reliable outputs, while also supporting deployment via ERNIE Bot and Baidu’s Qianfan cloud tools.

• Predictions for ERNIE 5.0 and Ecosystem Growth

Later in 2025, Baidu unveiled ERNIE 5.0, a natively omni‑modal foundation model designed to understand and generate text, images, audio, and video in a unified way.

This next‑generation model aims to boost performance across a broader range of tasks, including creative content generation, advanced reasoning, and multimodal interaction, and is being made available via ERNIE Bot and the Qianfan platform. (Source: LangChain)

PR Newswire states that Baidu’s public roadmap indicates continued expansion of its AI ecosystem, including deeper integration of ERNIE models into search, developer tools, and new application frameworks that integrate models, agents, and AI‑driven tools.

Key Takeaways

• ERNIE AI’s multimodal and reasoning capabilities allow it to handle complex tasks across text, images, audio, and video efficiently
• Free access to Ernie Bot and the open-source release of ERNIE models enable developers and businesses to experiment with and integrate advanced AI easily
• ERNIE 4.5 and X1 deliver competitive performance against global AI models, with strong results on Chinese-language tasks and cost-effective reasoning
• The following versions, such as ERNIE X1.1 and ERNIE 5.0, are likely to offer improved understanding of different modes, advanced reasoning, and broader use across company and consumer processes

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FAQs

1. What is ERNIE Bot used for?

ERNIE Bot is used for conversational AI tasks, including answering questions, generating text, summarizing content, and interpreting inputs such as images, audio, and video.

2. What is ERNIE AI, and how is it different from other AI models?

ERNIE AI is Baidu’s AI model family, featuring strong multimodal and reasoning capabilities. It differs from other models by integrating text, images, audio, and video in a single framework and emphasizing structured knowledge understanding.

3. How can I access ERNIE 4.5 and X1 for free?

You can access them via the official Ernie Bot website on web and mobile platforms for individual use without a subscription.

4. Is ERNIE 4.5 open-source, and where can developers find it?

Yes, ERNIE 4.5 is open-source under the Apache 2.0 license. Developers can find it on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub.

5. What are the main capabilities of ERNIE X1?

ERNIE X1 excels in reasoning, problem-solving, logical planning, and multimodal understanding across text, images, and other data types.

6. How does ERNIE 4.5 compare to GPT-4.5 on benchmarks?

ERNIE 4.5 shows very similar performance to GPT-4.5, performing slightly better on text benchmarks and excelling in Chinese reasoning and specific multimodal tasks.

7. What applications are best suited for ERNIE AI?

Applications include chatbots, document processing, Q&A systems, multimodal content analysis, code interpretation, and creative content generation.

8. Does ERNIE AI support multiple languages?

Yes, it supports multiple languages, with robust performance in Chinese.

9. How does Baidu price ERNIE API access?

Pricing varies by usage, model size, and deployment. Individual access via Ernie Bot is complimentary, while enterprise APIs are priced based on usage.

10. What is the future roadmap for Baidu’s ERNIE series? 

Baidu has planned incremental updates, including ERNIE X1.1, the launch of ERNIE 5.0 with omni-modal capabilities, and tighter integration with its AI ecosystem.

11. How does free Ernie Bot impact the competitive AI landscape?

It opens the doors to cutting-edge AI for all, creates a favorable environment for trying new ideas, and brings Baidu to a level playing field with international AI systems through user and developer support.