"One thing we learned from DeepSeek is that open-sourcing the best models can greatly help adoption," said Baidu's Robin Li.

Chinese search engine giant Baidu said on Friday it would make its next-generation artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30, a major shift in strategy as competition heats up.Baidu CEO Robin Li had long advocated for closed-source models as the only viable path for AI development,

AI-generated content now appears in 22% of search result pages, with efforts focused on quality and relevance,” Li said during the earnings call.

Baidu Inc. has taken the unprecedented step of declaring its Ernie AI model free for users, a move that could help the Chinese search giant regain momentum in a race to develop next-generation artificial intelligence.

The company, the operator of China’s most popular search engine, announced the plan today. Reuters reported that the initiative centers on an upcoming family of Ernie models dubbed the Ernie 4.5 series. Baidu will start rolling out the LLM series to users in the coming months and plans to open-source its code on June 30.

Chinese search engine group Baidu said on Tuesday that the success of AI company DeepSeek had inspired it to embrace an open source model, under which the source code of its upcoming generative AI chatbot release will be publicly available.