Chinese internet search giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence reasoning model Sunday and made its AI chatbot services free as ferocious competition grips the sector. Baidu also made the models free to use, more than two weeks ahead of schedule.

Chinese internet search giant Baidu released a new artificial intelligence reasoning model Sunday and made its AI chatbot services free as ferocious competition grips the sector. Baidu also made the models free to use, more than two weeks ahead of schedule.

Baidu announced in a WeChat post that its latest X1 reasoning model -- which the company claims performs similarly to DeepSeek's but for lower cost -- and a new foundation model, Ernie 4.5, were available via its AI chatbot Ernie Bot.