On March 16, 2025, Baidu Inc. announced the launch of its latest foundation models, ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1.
The company also made ERNIE Bot freely accessible to individual users through its official website, ahead of its original schedule. This move marks a significant step in Baidu’s AI development and accessibility strategy.
ERNIE 4.5: The Next-Generation Multimodal Foundation Model
ERNIE 4.5 is Baidu’s latest native multimodal foundation model, designed to integrate and understand various forms of content, including text, images, audio, and video.
This model demonstrates comprehensive improvements in multiple areas, such as comprehension, generation, reasoning, and memory. Notably, ERNIE 4.5 has shown significant enhancements in hallucination prevention, logical reasoning, and coding abilities.
In terms of performance, ERNIE 4.5 outperforms GPT-4.5 in multiple benchmarks while being priced at just 1% of GPT-4.5. This cost-effectiveness, combined with its advanced capabilities, positions ERNIE 4.5 as a competitive alternative in the AI market.
The advancements in ERNIE 4.5 are attributed to several key technologies, including:
- FlashMask Dynamic Attention Masking: Enhances the model’s attention mechanism.
- Heterogeneous Multimodal Mixture-of-Experts: Improves multimodal integration.
- Spatiotemporal Representation Compression: Optimizes data representation.
- Knowledge-Centric Training Data Construction: Focuses on high-quality training data.
- Self-feedback Enhanced Post-Training: Refines the model through continuous feedback.
ERNIE X1: The Multimodal Deep-Thinking Reasoning Model
ERNIE X1 is Baidu’s first multimodal deep-thinking reasoning model capable of tool use.
It excels in various tasks, including Chinese knowledge Q&A, literary creation, manuscript writing, dialogue, logical reasoning, and complex calculations.
ERNIE X1 supports a wide range of tools, such as advanced search, document-based Q&A, image understanding, AI image generation, code interpreting, webpage reading, and more.
In terms of performance, ERNIE X1 delivers results on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price. This makes it an attractive option for users seeking high-quality reasoning capabilities at a lower cost.
Integration and Future Plans
Baidu plans to integrate both ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 into its product ecosystem, including Baidu Search and the Wenxiaoyan app. This integration aims to provide a more versatile and enhanced experience to a broader base of individual users.
For enterprise users and developers, ERNIE 4.5 is now available via APIs on Baidu AI Cloud’s MaaS platform, Qianfan. ERNIE X1 will also be accessible on the platform soon, allowing businesses and developers to leverage these advanced AI models for various applications.
Conclusion
Baidu’s launch of ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1, along with the early release of ERNIE Bot, underscores the company’s commitment to advancing AI technology and making it more accessible.
By offering these models at competitive prices and integrating them into its product ecosystem, Baidu aims to drive innovation and provide enhanced AI capabilities to both individual and enterprise users.
