DeepSeek got Baidu and OpenAI to offer their chatbots for free

Chinese internet giant Baidu has decided to offer its advanced AI chatbots for free. The move comes in response to growing competition from startup DeepSeek, whose models have gained a lot of popularity. Baidu has announced that its chatbot Ernie Bot, which offers premium features like AI image generation, will be available for free to mobile and desktop users from April 1.

The move followed an announcement from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who revealed the roadmap for the new GPT-5 model on the X platform. ChatGPT users will get unlimited access to the model for free, with fully paying users getting access to a "higher level of intelligence".

Baidu$BIDU also announced that it plans to launch a new version of its AI model by the end of June, which will be open source for the first time, similar to all of DeepSeek's models. The new Deep Search feature, which will include enhanced reasoning capabilities and expert-level answers, will also be made available for free in April.

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