China’s AI Sector Is Booming With Baidu Going Free, DeepSeek Adoption, & ByteDance’s Goku

As the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit AKA Paris AI Summit concluded, one thing was made clear from the conference that consisted of over 100 companies—everyone wants a slice of the AI pie.

In contrast to previous conferences, such as the United Kingdom's AI Safety Summit at the leg end of 2023, which ordinarily focuses on all that’s wrong with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, this meeting offered a more positive outlook.

The first day saw co-host French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announce increased spending and reduced regulations, while Day 2 had co-host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recognize AI’s transformative abilities while calling for its democratization and bias-free output.

Ultimately, the conference birthed a framework agreement signed by at least 58 countries including France, India, China, Japan, and others. However, the U.S. and U.K. refrained from joining the group, citing excessive control measures that lacked national security resolutions.

It’s safe to say that every country wants to lead the AI race, and in the last few weeks, China has emerged as a major player that’s set to challenge the dominance held by U.S.-based companies. 

Baidu’s Ernie

In a WeChat post, Chinese search engine leader Baidu said it would be bringing its generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbot Ernie to users for free.

This move is set to take effect from April 1, 2025, and will offer improved technology and reduced costs across its desktop and mobile platforms.

According to the company, its latest version—Ernie 4.0—matches OpenAI’s GPT-4 in performance and capabilities.

Baidu also announced the launch of an advanced search function with enhanced reasoning capabilities, which would be available to users from April 1 and will also be free to use.

Following the announcement, Baidu’s shares climbed over 12% in Hong Kong.

Ahead of this, sources say that the company is set to release its new model—Ernie 5.0—in the second half of 2025. Reportedly, the new model will feature multimodal capabilities allowing it to process and convert between different formats including text, images, video, and audio.

Although Baidu was one of the first companies to jump on the GenAI bandwagon following OpenAI’s ChatGPT launch in November 2022, it has since fallen behind ByteDance's Doubao and DeepSeek.

Baidu is also planning to bring its self-driving robotaxi services to Dubai.

DeepSeek’s Widescale Adoption

In the last month, DeepSeek has caused mayhem in the AI industry.

The AI startup came in with a chatbot that could match OpenAI’s latest model but was built using lesser-powered GPUs, in less time, and cost less than what other leaders said it would require.

Also, DeepSeek’s powerful tools were open-source.

As DeepSeek topped Apple’s App Store charts across the globe, its launch hit the shares of major tech conglomerates—especially NVIDIA, which saw its stocks tumbling over 17% and around $600 billion wiped out from its market capitalization.

Ultimately, questions were thrown over its effectiveness, accuracy, and security, with a wide range of bans on the horizon. Further reports found that DeepSeek actually incurred expenses of $1.6 billion in sourcing hardware for its servers, along with around $944 million in operating costs, while accessing more powerful GPUs.

Needless to say, it’s been a bumpy ride for users of DeepSeek.

However, this hasn’t dithered the interest of businesses looking to infuse its AI tools into their products.

According to reports, eight automakers including BYD (for its driver assistance tech), nine financial securities companies, three state-owned telecommunications operators, and smartphone brand Honor make up a small number of organizations rushing to integrate DeepSeek in just the last week.

Furthermore, cloud computing providers Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu have also enabled their clients to access DeepSeek’s latest model.

DeepSeek’s success has rendered it a major player in the AI sector, a move that has led experts to believe AI costs will further drop, as the technology becomes more accessible. This could also result in easements in U.S. chip exports and the possibility of the two countries working together, despite increasing regulatory concerns.

ByteDance’s Goku

ByteDance has been a key player in the AI industry for a while now, and the company recently released its newest AI product—Goku AI.

Goku AI is a video generator that’s capable of creating high-quality videos in real time and can convert images, text, and motion signals into video content.

Furthermore, it can create lifelike human animations with advanced facial and motion modeling, cutting out the need for traditional filming or editing processes. It also comes with adaptive video generation, which enables users to customize video elements with high precision.

Building on Goku, ByteDance also offers Goku+, a new family of video foundation models that are specifically designed to optimize advertising scenarios involving humans and products to maximize performance, even allowing users to create advertising videos at 100x lower cost.

Goku+ can transform text into hyper-realistic human videos longer than 20 seconds, turn images into video clips, produce realistic product and human interaction videos, and produce videos from simple text prompts, all in high definition.


Do you think Chinese AI companies will be able to challenge the leading position U.S. AI companies currently hold?

Let us know in the comments below!