Baidu made its AI model Ernie 4.5 open source, inspired by DeepSeek's success.CEO Robin Li previously said closed-source models were more powerful and economical.Baidu's shares surged last week after announcing its AI chatbot will be free from April 1.

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,

Baidu CEO Robin Li, who previously advocated for closed-source models, reportedly acknowledged the potential of open-source development to accelerate AI adoption.

Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc announced on Sunday night that it will integrate DeepSeek's large language model into its search engine and proprietary Ernie model, as part of broader push to diversify users' search experience.

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.