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ERNIE Bot (Wenxin Yiyan / Wenxiaoyan)

ERNIE Bot (文心一言) is Baidu's chatbot, first released to invited testers in March 2023 and opened to the public that August. It has been offered in free and paid tiers and renamed Wenxiaoyan in 2024.

Era Generative AI for everyone

2025 · 6 20232025
Events per year
Release date
Developer
Baidu

What it is

ERNIE Bot, known in Chinese as 文心一言 (Wenxin Yiyan), is a chatbot from Baidu. It was launched for invited testing on 16 March 2023 and opened to the public on 31 August 2023, after Chinese regulatory approval.[1]

A chatbot is a program that holds a conversation in natural language and answers questions typed or spoken by users. ## Origins

At launch in March 2023 the chatbot was powered by ERNIE 3.0. Version 2.1.0, released on 21 June 2023, added features powered by ERNIE 3.5, including the ChatFile plugin for working with documents.[2]

Baidu said the chatbot passed 100 million users in December 2023. Registration required a Chinese mobile number.[4] Users reached 200 million by April 2024 and 300 million by 28 June 2024.[5][1]

Main features and pricing

A paid professional plan based on ERNIE 4.0 started on 1 November 2023 at RMB 59.90 a month, or RMB 49.90 with auto-renewal. The version based on ERNIE 3.5 stayed free.[3]

On 4 September 2024 the app was renamed 文小言 (Wenxiaoyan) and repositioned as a "new search" assistant, with rich-media search, multimodal input and digital humans. ERNIE 4.0 access was made free for the rest of that month.[6]

On 16 March 2025 Baidu made ERNIE Bot free for individual users, ahead of a planned 1 April date. Users could use ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 at no charge on yiyan.baidu.com.[7]

Its place in development

ERNIE Bot was the consumer front end for successive ERNIE models. ERNIE X1.1 (September 2025) was offered through the ERNIE Bot website ernie.baidu.com and the Wenxiaoyan app, and the ERNIE 5.0 preview (November 2025) was offered on the ERNIE Bot website.[8][9]

CapabilitiesLarge language models

ApplicationsConsumer apps

Ecosystem & regionChina

HistoryProduct history

20256

  1. ReleaseBaidu unveils the omni-modal ERNIE 5.0 at Baidu World 2025

    On 13 November 2025 Baidu unveiled ERNIE 5.0 at Baidu World 2025, describing it as a natively omni-modal model. It ranked eighth on the LMArena text leaderboard after leaving preview.[^1][^3]

  2. ReleaseBaidu unveils ERNIE X1.1 at WAVE SUMMIT 2025

    On 9 September 2025 Baidu unveiled ERNIE X1.1 at WAVE SUMMIT 2025, claiming gains over ERNIE X1 of 34.8% in factuality and 12.5% in instruction following.[^1][^2]

  3. ReleaseBaidu launches ERNIE X1 Turbo at half X1's price

    On 25 April 2025 Baidu released ERNIE X1 Turbo, a reasoning model that Baidu said outperforms DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3, priced at a quarter of DeepSeek-R1.[^1]

  4. ReleaseBaidu releases ERNIE 4.5, a native multimodal foundation model

    On 16 March 2025 Baidu released ERNIE 4.5, a native multimodal foundation model, together with the reasoning model ERNIE X1, and made ERNIE Bot free to individual users ahead of schedule.

  5. UpdateBaidu makes ERNIE Bot free ahead of schedule

    On 16 March 2025 Baidu made its ERNIE Bot free for individual users, two weeks ahead of its planned 1 April date, giving free access to the ERNIE 4.5 and ERNIE X1 models.

  6. ReleaseBaidu launches ERNIE X1, its first reasoning model

    On 16 March 2025 Baidu launched ERNIE X1, a deep-thinking reasoning model and its first multimodal reasoning model able to use tools. Baidu said it matched DeepSeek-R1 at half the price.[^1]

20242

  1. UpdateBaidu renames the ERNIE Bot app Wenxiaoyan

    On 4 September 2024 Baidu upgraded and renamed its ERNIE Bot app as Wenxiaoyan (文小言), repositioning it as a "new search" assistant that combines search with text, image and multimodal generation.

  2. ReleaseBaidu launches ERNIE 4.0 Turbo as ERNIE Bot reaches 300 million users

    On 28 June 2024 Baidu announced ERNIE 4.0 Turbo, describing it as faster and cheaper than ERNIE 4.0, and said ERNIE Bot had reached 300 million users.

20234

  1. ReleaseBaidu launches ERNIE 4.0 at Baidu World 2023

    On 17 October 2023 Baidu CEO Robin Li unveiled ERNIE 4.0 at Baidu World 2023 in Beijing, claiming it was "not inferior in any aspect to GPT-4" and announcing a paid ERNIE Bot plan built on it.

  2. UpdateERNIE Bot opens to the public after regulatory approval

    On 31 August 2023 Baidu opened its ERNIE Bot chatbot fully to the public through a website and mobile app after Chinese regulatory approval; more than a million users tried it within a day.

  3. ReleaseBaidu upgrades ERNIE Bot to ERNIE 3.5

    In late June 2023, Baidu announced ERNIE 3.5, an upgrade to ERNIE Bot that it said beat ChatGPT in overall ability and GPT-4 in some Chinese-language tasks, with higher throughput and a plugin architecture.[^1]

  4. ReleaseBaidu unveils ERNIE Bot, China's first big-tech answer to ChatGPT

    On 16 March 2023 Robin Li unveiled ERNIE Bot, Baidu's chatbot, to invited testers at a Beijing event. Baidu's Hong Kong shares fell as much as 10% that day, and closed down 6.4%.

Developed by1

Baidu

Powered by11

ERNIE 3.0ERNIE 4.0ERNIE 4.5ERNIE X1ERNIE 5.0ERNIE 5.1ERNIE 4.5 TurboERNIE 3.5ERNIE X1 TurboERNIE 4.0 TurboERNIE X1.1

Notes and sources

  1. Ernie Bothttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Bot
  2. Baidu Says Ernie AI Beats ChatGPT In Key Metricshttps://silicon.co.uk/e-innovation/artificial-intelligence/baidu-ernie-chatgpt-518187
  3. Baidu charges $8 per month for ERNIE Bot's professional planhttps://technode.com/2023/11/02/baidu-charges-8-per-month-for-using-ernie-bot-4-0/
  4. Baidu says its ChatGPT rival Ernie bot now has more than 100 million usershttps://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/29/baidu-says-its-chatgpt-rival-ernie-bot-has-more-than-100-million-users.html
  5. Baidu Presents a Suite of Toolkits and Models to Supercharge AI Creativity at Create 2024https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baidu-presents-a-suite-of-toolkits-and-models-to-supercharge-ai-creativity-at-create-2024-302118130.html
  6. 百度推出新搜索文小言https://www.yicai.com/news/102259163.html
  7. Baidu Unveils ERNIE 4.5 and Reasoning Model ERNIE X1, Makes ERNIE Bot Free Ahead of Schedulehttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baidu-unveils-ernie-4-5-and-reasoning-model-ernie-x1--makes-ernie-bot-free-ahead-of-schedule-302402490.html
  8. Baidu Unveils Reasoning Model ERNIE X1.1 with Upgrades in Key Capabilitieshttps://technode.global/prnasia/baidu-unveils-reasoning-model-ernie-x1-1-with-upgrades-in-key-capabilities/
  9. Baidu Unveils ERNIE 5.0 and a Series of AI Applications at Baidu World 2025, Ramps Up Global Pushhttps://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/baidu-unveils-ernie-5-0-and-a-series-of-ai-applications-at-baidu-world-2025--ramps-up-global-push-302614531.html

Cite this page: ERNIE Bot (Wenxin Yiyan / Wenxiaoyan). TellWorld, https://www.tellworld.net/products/ernie-bot. Updated 2026-11-08