HONG KONG, March 16 (Reuters) - China's Baidu ( BIDU )

said on Sunday it has launched two new artificial intelligence

models, the multimodal ERNIE 4.5 and a new reasoning-focused

model called X1, as it vies to stand out in a fiercely

competitive AI race.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's roll-out of AI models which it

says is on par with, or even better than, industry-leading

models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, has

roiled the industry and re-energised the global AI race.

Baidu's ( BIDU ) ERNIE 4.5 model has "excellent multimodal

understanding ability. It has more advanced language ability,

and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory abilities

are comprehensively improved," the company said.

It also has "high EQ", and it is easy to understand network

memes and satirical cartoons, Baidu ( BIDU ) said.

One of China's earliest tech giants to launch a

ChatGPT-style chatbot, Baidu ( BIDU ) has struggled to gain widespread

adoption for its Ernie large language model, despite claiming

performance comparable to OpenAI's GPT-4, amid fierce

competition.

Multimodal AI systems are capable of processing and

integrating various types of data including text, video, images

and audio, and can convert content across these formats.

The X1 has "stronger understanding, planning, reflection,

and evolution capabilities," Baidu ( BIDU ) said, adding that it is the

first deep thinking model that uses tools autonomously.

(Reporting by Farah Master and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by

Lincoln Feast.)