BEIJING, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Chinese search engine giant

Baidu ( BIDU ) said on Friday it would make its next-generation

artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30, a

major shift in strategy as competition heats up.

Baidu ( BIDU ) CEO Robin Li had long advocated for closed-source

models as the only viable path for AI development, but the

advent of DeepSeek has upended the sector. The startup offers

open-source AI services that it claims are comparable in

performance to U.S. pioneer OpenAI's advanced systems but come

with a lower operational cost.

Keen to increase market share, Baidu ( BIDU ) also announced on

Thursday that it would make its AI chatbot Ernie Bot free

starting April 1, about a year and a half after introducing

premium versions.

Baidu ( BIDU ) was among the first big Chinese companies to invest

heavily in AI following the 2022 debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

However, its Ernie large language model has struggled to gain

widespread adoption. Baidu ( BIDU ) has said its current version, Ernie

4.0, matches OpenAI's GPT-4 capabilities.

In China, ByteDance's Doubao chatbot has the most active

monthly users with 78.6 million, DeepSeek has 33.7 million while

Ernie Bot has 13 million, according to January data from AI

product tracker Aicpb.com.

"We will gradually launch the Ernie 4.5 series in the coming

months and officially open-source it from June 30," Baidu ( BIDU ) said

in a WeChat post.

Li appeared to have changed tack on open-source development,

telling attendees at an event in Dubai this week that it could

accelerate AI adoption.

"If you open things up, a lot of people will be curious

enough to try it. This will help spread the technology much

faster," he said.

Baidu ( BIDU ) also plans to launch a new next-generation model,

Ernie 5, in the second half of 2025, a person familiar with the

matter has said.