ERNIE, which stands for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, is Baidu’s answer to ChatGPT. The consumer chatbot answers questions, writes and edits text, generates images, and handles tasks in Chinese and other languages, and it is built into Baidu’s search engine and apps. It benefits from Baidu’s knowledge graph and search data, and is a major option for Chinese-language users.
For developers and companies, Baidu offers ERNIE models through its Qianfan cloud platform, with APIs, fine-tuning, and tools for building AI applications. The company has released versions of its models with open weights, which lets developers run them independently. The models support multimodal inputs and reasoning, and are used in enterprise products, cloud services, and Baidu’s autonomous driving and other businesses.
ERNIE is free for basic use, with paid access for higher-volume API usage. As a Chinese model, it follows Chinese regulatory requirements on content, which shapes its answers on some topics, and the data handling policies are governed by Chinese law. Alternatives from China include DeepSeek, Alibaba’s Qwen, Moonshot’s Kimi, and Zhipu’s GLM. ERNIE is most relevant for Chinese-language applications and for developers in Baidu’s ecosystem.