China's Baidu Group has released the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 and Wenxin Large Model X1, which are now available to users for free

Reuters Beijing, March 16 - Chinese search engine giant - Baidu Group (9888.HK) (BIDU.O) announced on Sunday the official release of the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 and Wenxin Large Model X1, both of which are now live on the Wenxin Yiyan official website and are available to users for free. Baidu stated in a news release on its WeChat public account that the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 has been launched on the Baidu Smart Cloud Qianfan Large Model Platform, where enterprise users and developers can log in to access the API (Application Programming Interface); the Wenxin Large Model X1 will also be available on Qianfan soon. Baidu Search, Wenxiao Yan APP, and other products will gradually integrate the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 and Wenxin Large Model X1. According to the company, the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 is a new generation of native multimodal foundational model independently developed by Baidu, achieving collaborative optimization through joint modeling of multiple modalities, with excellent multimodal understanding capabilities; the Wenxin Large Model X1 possesses stronger understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution capabilities, and supports multimodal functionality, being the first deep thinking model to autonomously utilize tools. "2025 will be a year of comprehensive iteration for large model technology. We will invest more boldly in artificial intelligence, data centers, and cloud infrastructure to create better and smarter next-generation models," Baidu stated. After the emergence of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which caused a stir in the tech community, Baidu, which has long advocated for closed-source development of AI large models, announced in mid-February that it would gradually launch the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 series in the coming months and officially open source it starting June 30. Baidu Group CEO Robin Li previously stated at an earnings conference that the Wenxin Large Model 4.5 series will be the best model in Baidu's history, "We are committed to enabling users and customers to experience its (Wenxin Large Model 4.5) capabilities more conveniently. Therefore, we decided to open source it, a decision stemming from our full confidence in our technological leadership." (End) (Reported by Wang Zhenzhen; Edited by Zhang Xiliang)