Chinese technology giant Baidu introduced its latest AI models at the Baidu Create 2025 developer conference in Wuhan: ERNIE X1 Turbo and ERNIE 4.5 Turbo. These are the upgraded versions of the ERNIE X1 and ERNIE 4.5 models that Baidu launched earlier this year, and are meant to deliver faster results at lower costs.
ERNIE X1 Turbo is a deep-thinking reasoning model that Baidu claims can outperform DeepSeek R1 and the latest version of DeepSeek V3. Its multimodal capabilities and strong reasoning skills allow ERNIE X1 Turbo to perform complex text generation, solve logic puzzles, solve math problems, and understand images.
Baidu has kept the price of its AI models competitive, and the case of X1 Turbo is similar. The new reasoning model is priced at about 25% of the DeepSeek R1; users need to pay $0.14 per 1M tokens for input and $0.55 per 1M tokens for output.
CEO Robin Li revealed during the conference that the new ERNIE 4.5 Turbo model offers faster processing speeds, complemented by an 80% price reduction from its predecessor, ERNIE 4.5. The model is priced at $0.11 per 1M tokens for input and $0.44 per 1M tokens for output.
While demonstrating the new models to the audience, Li said that ERNIE 4.5 Turbo has made significant progress in multimodal reasoning and also improved its logical reasoning, coding ability, and reduced hallucination. Meanwhile, the X1 Turbo has a more advanced thinking chain, a stronger ability to think deeply, and is good at literary creation, which enhances its multimodal ability.
"Why do we keep lowering the price of large language models? Because it's a big obstacle for developers to make AI applications because of the high cost, they can't afford it," Li said (translated) during the keynote.
He added that low-cost large language models (LLMs) can lead to a surge in AI applications. For example, an AI digital human is one of the most exciting AI breakthroughs, which can be ultrarealistic in voice and appearance, and has potential use cases in live broadcasting, gaming, and e-commerce.
The ERNIE family of models has been in development for years and was publicly introduced back in 2023. These models power Baidu's AI ecosystem and its ChatGPT-style chatbot known as Ernie Bot, which is used in various products, including Baidu Search and Baidu Maps, among others. It was reported that Baidu is working on the next generation of its foundational model, ERNIE 5.0, which is expected to launch sometime in the second half of this year.
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