HONG KONG - China's tech giant Baidu said on Sunday it has launched two new artificial intelligence models, including a new reasoning-focused model that it said rivalled DeepSeek's model, as it vies to stand out in a fiercely competitive AI race.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's roll-out of AI models which it says is on par with, or even better than, industry-leading models in the United States at a fraction of the cost, has roiled the industry and re-energized the global AI race.

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"ERNIE X1 delivers performance on par with DeepSeek R1 at only half the price," Baidu said of one of the new models. The X1 has "stronger understanding, planning, reflection, and evolution capabilities," Baidu said, adding that it is the first deep thinking model that uses tools autonomously.

Baidu said its latest foundation model ERNIE 4.5 has "excellent multimodal understanding ability. It has more advanced language ability, and its understanding, generation, logic, and memory abilities are comprehensively improved."

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It also has "high EQ", and it is easy to understand network memes and satirical cartoons, Baidu said.

Multimodal AI systems are capable of processing and integrating various types of data including text, video, images and audio, and can convert content across these formats.