China now connects everything – from chatbots and smart vehicles to government departments and schools – to DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence (AI) model that emerged and became famous last month. Baidu, a Chinese search engine,
announced that its chatbot Ernie Bot 4.9 version now integrates with DeepSeek-R1 to enhance students’ problem-solving capability. Students can take a picture of a question, and then the chatbot will answer it with detailed steps.
The company also
said it will allow individual users and SMEs to use Ernie’s basic functions for free from April and will charge high-end customers only for some tailor-made services.
Some Chinese media
said Baidu could obtain more data by giving up its closed-source model and connecting with other AI models, but such a move would also require it to rely on external platforms and cause it to lose competitiveness over the long run.
