Baidu (HKG:9888) will launch another version of the Ernie artificial intelligence model in the second half of 2025, Reuters reported, citing a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The new version, to be called Ernie 5, will sport multimodal capabilities, which will allow processing and conversion between different formats such as text, video, images, and audio, the report said, citing CNBC.

The release of Ernie 5 comes amid competition from Chinese startup DeepSeek, Reuters said.

Ernie 4 has struggled to gain traction even as Baidu has claimed the large language model matches the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-4, according to the newswire.

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