Ernie Bot, built by Baidu, China's dominant search engine, launched in March 2023 as one of the earliest major Chinese responses to ChatGPT, built on Baidu's ERNIE model family that the company has continued developing through several generations since, including a 2025 release Baidu positioned competitively against leading Western models on document understanding and chart-reading benchmarks.
In 2025, Baidu rebranded the consumer app's Chinese name to Wenxiaoyan, repositioning it explicitly as an AI-powered search assistant rather than a general-purpose chatbot, a shift meant to differentiate it in an increasingly crowded Chinese AI market. The English "Ernie Bot" name has stayed in use internationally even as the domestic branding changed.
The chat interface is free to use, tied into Baidu's broader search and consumer product ecosystem. For anyone tracking Baidu's specific answer to search-integrated AI, or needing strong Mandarin-language performance backed by China's largest search engine, Ernie Bot's repositioning toward search assistance reflects where Baidu currently sees its competitive advantage.
