On February 13th, both OpenAI's ChatGPT and Baidu's Wenxin Yiyan announced news regarding free usage. Baidu clearly stated that Wenxin Yiyan will be fully free starting from April 1st. After the release of the domestic DeepSeek R1 model, it has attracted extensive attention. Against this backdrop, Baidu (9988) officially announced that by then, all users on the PC and APP versions will be able to experience the latest models of the Wenxin series. Moreover, starting from now, Wenxin Yiyan has launched the in - depth search function, which will also be freely available for use from April 1st.
Baidu claims that the in - depth search function has more powerful thinking, planning, and external tool - using capabilities. It can provide users with expert - level content replies, handle tasks in multiple scenarios, and achieve multi - modal input and output. Currently, users can experience this function on the official website of Wenxin Yiyan, and the APP version will be launched synchronously soon.
In addition, it is reported that Baidu will launch the new - generation "Wenxin Big Model 5.0 (Ernie 5.0)" in the second half of the year. Foreign media cited sources as saying that the new version of Wenxin Yiyan, as a basic model with significantly enhanced multi - modal capabilities, can process and integrate text, photos, videos, and audio data, and can be transformed into the required modality according to user requirements.
On the OpenAI side, its Chief Executive Officer, Sam Altman, announced on the social platform X in the early morning of February 13th, Beijing time, that GPT - 4.5/5 will be released soon one after another. The free version of ChatGPT will be able to use GPT - 5 for conversations without restrictions under the standard intelligent settings.