Chinese technology giant Bido It has released two new artificial intelligence models for free for use, as they compete to restore its main position in the country’s competitive intelligence space in the country.

Paido models It was launched on Sunday It included the first model that focuses on the company, and Come to the plans To move towards an open source strategy.

However, experts told CNBC that although the version of the models is a positive development for Baidu, they also shed light on how to play it with Ernie-one of China’s direct versions of Chatbot that resemble Chatgpt-struggling to obtain widespread dependence.

“The new models make Bido more competitive since the company has delayed the release of the thinking model,” Lian Jae Soo, chief analyst at OMDIA, told CNBC.

Thinking model is a large linguistic model that is divided into smaller pieces and is seen in multiple ways before creating a response. It is designed to address complex problems similar to humans.

Chinese Deepsek raised the global AI race and transformed the ecosystem of China in January when it released the thinking model in R1, which competes with American competitors despite its cost of a small part of the price.

Bido has He said The new Ernie X1 thinking model provides “equality with Deepseek R1 in only half the price”, and it has “stronger understanding, planning, meditation, and capabilities.” CNBC was unable to independently verify this claim.

According to WeI Sun, the main artificial intelligence analyst in counter -research, the future competitiveness of Baidu can depend on whether its new models meet the benefits of promised performance and cost benefits.

Sun said: “It is clear that Bido is in a position to catch up, due to the pace of slow innovation and reduce rapid transformations in the market dynamics.”

Baidu launched the first AI’s given podium to the public in 2023, which gave China one of its first answers to the famous Chatbot from AI.

However, though The initial momentumBaidu Ernie’s product has been since then Eclipse by competitors Including startups as well as large technology companies such as Ali Baba And bytedance.

Experts tell a number of reasons for Bido struggles and slow innovation.

“Bidu was left behind when they tried to build special models and compete to finance artificial intelligence,” CNBC told CNBC. He added that the company also suffered a recent government campaign and was distracted from “organizational nonsense”.

Royal models retain their source code and basic architecture secret, unlike models such as Deepseek, which is provided by the source code that is available freely on the open web of the potential modification and distribution.

“Using a closed source approach means this [Baidu] Kai Wang, the great stock analyst in Morningstar, said that training its model from the zero point while the open source models managed to benefit from certain parts that were combined for developers.

Baidu, however, He said last month It would make the AI ​​of the next generation, Irnie open source from June 30, according to Reuters.

“Baidu has always been very supportive of its ownership model and was an audio against the open source, but the disturbances like Deepseek have proven that open source models could be competitive.”

He added that Bido “follows mere steps” for its largest competitors in China, i.e. alibaba, Deepseek and Tencent, all of which have now released open source models.

According to Morningstar’s Wang, artificial intelligence players like Baidu reach new models every month or so, as competitors are trying to continue to excel every progress.

However, “the distinctive in Chinese models is still the data used in models, and the condition of the application.”

In these areas, experts see some of the main advantages of Baidu, which runs a wide range of popular applications and services, including the main search engine, which provides access to artificial intelligence tools, as well as the online forum application, Baidu Tieba.

“Due to the large user base in the consumer space, especially in artificial research and intelligence systems, the company can still maintain its leadership position in the market as long as it continues in the innovation cycle.”

during Call profits late last yearRobin Lee, CEO of Baidu, said he expected to transform artificial intelligence to search for Baidu into the new Killer application in the era of artificial intelligence.

“The secret of artificial intelligence is data, chips, good mathematics and cheap energy … you must have data to run it. They have data,” said Wang of Constellation Research.

Correction: This article has been updated to clarify that new artificial intelligence models of BAIDU are free to use.