(Yicai) Feb. 13 -- Chinese technology giant Baidu will make its large language model Ernie Bot free to use starting April 1 amid intense market competition and declining development costs.

All Ernie Bot users on personal computers and mobile applications will be able to access the latest version for free, the Beijing-based search engine company which is now shifting toward artificial intelligence software announced today.

Baidu began testing Ernie Bot, known as Wenxin Yiyan in Chinese, in March 2023 and released it to the public in August 2023. Since then, it has amassed over 430 million users, with a peak daily inquiry volume of 1.5 billion. Its users span the financial, medical, and education sectors.

Additionally, Baidu announced that the Ernie Bot website will launch an in-depth search function today, providing users with expert-level content consultation. This service will soon be available on the mobile app and will also become free to use from April 1.

Ernie Bot's in-depth search function features enhanced reasoning, planning, and tool-calling capabilities, enabling it to handle multiple scenarios simultaneously, according to Baidu.

The resource-intensive AI sector is expected to become increasingly cost-effective. Baidu founder and Chief Executive Robin Li stated that the inference cost of large language models could be reduced by more than 90 percent per year. He made this remark during a conversation with Omar Sultan Al Olama, the United Arab Emirates' minister of artificial intelligence, at the World Governments Summit 2025 in Dubai on Feb. 11.

Editor: Emmi Laine