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Baidu has unveiled ERNIE X1 Turbo and 4.5 Turbo, two fast models that boast impressive performance alongside dramatic cost reductions.
Developed as enhancements to the existing ERNIE X1 and 4.5 models, both new Turbo versions highlight multimodal processing, robust reasoning skills, and aggressive pricing strategies designed to capture developer interest and marketshare.
Baidu ERNIE X1 Turbo: Deep reasoning meets cost efficiency
Positioned as a deep-thinking reasoning model, ERNIE X1 Turbo tackles complex tasks requiring sophisticated understanding. It enters a competitive field, claiming superior performance in some benchmarks against rivals like DeepSeek R1, V3, and OpenAI o1:
Key to X1 Turbo’s enhanced capabilities is an advanced “chain of thought” process, enabling more structured and logical problem-solving.
Furthermore, ERNIE X1 Turbo boasts improved multimodal functions – the ability to understand and process information beyond just text, potentially including images or other data types – alongside refined tool utilisation abilities. This makes it particularly well-suited for nuanced applications such as literary creation, complex logical reasoning challenges, code generation, and intricate instruction following.
ERNIE X1 Turbo achieves this performance while undercutting competitor pricing. Input token costs start at $0.14 per million tokens, with output tokens priced at $0.55 per million. This pricing structure is approximately 25% of DeepSeek R1.
Baidu ERNIE 4.5 Turbo: Multimodal muscle at a fraction of the cost
Sharing the spotlight is ERNIE 4.5 Turbo, which focuses on delivering upgraded multimodal features and significantly faster response times compared to its non-Turbo counterpart. The emphasis here is on providing a versatile, responsive AI experience while slashing operational costs.
The model achieves an 80% price reduction compared to the original ERNIE 4.5 with input set at $0.11 per million tokens and output at $0.44 per million tokens. This represents roughly 40% of the cost of the latest version of DeepSeek V3, again highlighting a deliberate strategy to attract users through cost-effectiveness.
Performance benchmarks further bolster its credentials. In multiple tests evaluating both multimodal and text capabilities, Baidu ERNIE 4.5 Turbo outperforms OpenAI’s highly-regarded GPT-4o model.
In multimodal capability assessments, ERNIE 4.5 Turbo achieved an average score of 77.68 to surpass GPT-4o’s score of 72.76 in the same tests.
While benchmark results always require careful interpretation, this suggests ERNIE 4.5 Turbo is a serious contender for tasks involving an integrated understanding of different data types.
Baidu continues to shake up the AI marketplace
The launch of ERNIE X1 Turbo and 4.5 Turbo signifies a growing trend in the AI sector: the democratisation of high-end capabilities. While foundational models continue to push the boundaries of performance, there is increasing demand for models that balance power with accessibility and affordability.
By lowering the price points for models with sophisticated reasoning and multimodal features, the Baidu ERNIE Turbo series could enable a wider range of developers and businesses to integrate advanced AI into their applications.
This competitive pricing puts pressure on established players like OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as emerging competitors like DeepSeek, potentially leading to further price adjustments across the market.
(Image Credit: Alpha Photo under CC BY-NC 2.0 license)
See also: China’s MCP adoption: AI assistants that actually do things
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