China biggest AI drop since DeepSeek, Baidu open Ernie, hitting market

Monday, giant of Chinese technology Baidu plans to do its Generative ernie ai Open source of great language, a decision of the Chinese technological sector which could be its greatest in the race of AI since the emergence of Deepseek. A spokesperson for Baidu confirmed the plan and said open sourcing would be a progressive deployment.

Will it be a shock for the market On the order of Deepseek? This is a question that divides AI experts.

A big change is that Baidu was not always on the open source train.

“Baidu has always been very favorable to its owner commercial model and has been vocal against open source, but disruptors like Deepseek have proven that open source models can be as competitive and reliable as the owners”, Lian Jye Su, chief analyst of technological research and the OMDIA advisory group, Previously said CNBC.

Now that Baidu has made the decision of open source, even if it is not a deep moment, it is important for the world race on AI.

“It is not only a story of China. Whenever a large laboratory opened a powerful model, it increases the bar of the whole industry,” said Sean Ren, an associate professor of computer science at the University of South California and researcher of the year of Samsung AI.

Ren says that Baidu’s movement exerts pressure on closed suppliers such as Openai and Anthropic to justify closed APIs and premium prices.

“While most consumers do not care if the code of a model is open source, they care about lower costs, better performance and support for their language or region. These advantages often come from open models, which give developers and researchers more freedom to iterate, personalize and deploy more quickly,” said Ren.

Other industry experts consider an Open Source Ernie as potentially even more disruptive for American and Chinese competitors with regard to the price equation.

“Baidu has just threw a Molotov in the AI ​​world,” said Alec Strasmore, founder of ADVisory Epic Lot. “Openai, Anthropic, Deepseek, all those guys who thought they were selling first -rate champagne are about to realize that Baidu will give something just as powerful,” said Strasmore, comparing Baidu’s decision to Costco creating Kirkland.

He said the message to all startups in the world was “to stop paying the best dollar”.

“It is not a competition; it is a declaration of war against the prizes,” said Strasmore.

Baidu said in March that its recent Ernie X1 model offers equal performance with DEEPSEEK R1 “just half the price”.

Baidu CEO Robin Li suggested earlier this year that deployment would help developers around the world in the development of AI. “Our versions aim to allow developers to create the best applications – without having to worry about the capacity of the model, costs or development tools,” said Li in a discourse to developers in China in April.

The least is a more time when investors have to analyze how the cost dynamics in access to AI models changes quickly, and what it means that more applications can be built on “these cheap dirt models”, said Strasmore. “Baidu will sow the world with Chinese AI models,” he added.

Making these more widely available AI tools is a notable development of Baidu, but “the news of Baidu who is going to open source probably landed with a big noise,” said Cliff Jurkiewicz, vice-president of global strategy at Phenome, an AI company applied for the human resources sector. “Most people in the United States do not even know that it is a Chinese technology company,” he said.

Jurkiewicz compared the wider movement of the architecture open in AI as the difference between Android and Apple.

“When Android emerged for the first time, its remarkable feature was that it was configurable and customizable. But it was almost too much work in the sense that people just wanted it to work properly,” said Jurkiewicz. “Android, out of the box, is clear and vanilla, so it must be personalized, and it is a real challenge,” he added.

Altman d’Openai says that open source must be “understood”

There is no doubt that the open source movement in AI is a threat to the commercial models of the main players in space. Sam Altman, CEO of Openai, wrote in A REDDIT thread of January About the question, and in the testimony of the more recent Senate, said that an open source deployment could occur this summer.

“While Openai has open source models in the past, the company has generally favored a proprietary approach to the development of closed sources,” said Altman, recognizing that this might need to change. “”[I personally think we need to] Discover a different open source strategy, “said Altman.” Everyone in Openai does not share this point of view, and it is not our current priority either … We will produce better models [going forward]But we will maintain less an advance than we have done in previous years. “”

In the Can appear in the Senate, Altman said“We realize that we open the AI ​​can do more to help here. We will therefore publish an open source model which, in our view, will be the main model this summer because we want people to rely on the American battery in terms of models with closed source. Many people use our technology and the technology of our colleagues. We think we are in good shape.”

More recently, Altman posted that the press release would be delayedBut still planned for the summer.

According to Jurkiewicz, an advantage that American players are that the Baidu version will meet skepticism at business level, with many questions about security. “On the other hand, the big players – Openai Chatgpt and Microsoft’s co -pilot – are integrated into everything,” said Jurkiewicz.

Ren has declared that although the open source often transmits a feeling of transparency, this does not necessarily result in market confidence. “It is not because the weights of a model are public that we know what data they have been formed, that consent has been given, or if these data contributors have been credited or offset,” said Ren.

While AI becomes more anchored in our daily life, this lack of responsibility becomes a serious problem. “If we do not work now, we risk putting systems on the scale which quietly extract the value of millions of people without consent, credit or compensation,” said Ren.

With Deepseek, some Countries have banned AI And there was general concerns To consumers downloading technology.

Strasmore said Chinese ties can become dangerous if more products are bound to the Baidu API. “This would practically give China access to each application on each phone. It is a scary component,” he said.