ERNIE Bot
Baidu's multimodal AI assistant that handles text, images, audio, and video, with strong Chinese-language capabilities and a free consumer tier.
About
ERNIE Bot is Baidu's flagship AI assistant, powered by the ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 models. It supports text, image, audio, and video inputs and excels at Chinese-language tasks including creative writing, Q&A, logical reasoning, and document analysis, while also handling English. Baidu made ERNIE Bot free for consumers in early 2026, with a paid subscription at roughly 60 yuan per month for professional users. Developers access the models through Baidu's API at low per-token rates, with ERNIE X1 positioned as a reasoning model capable of tool use for more complex agentic workflows.