What is ERNIE Bot?
ERNIE Bot (文心一言, Wenxin Yiyan) is Baidu's AI chat assistant, built on Baidu's ERNIE model family. It handles conversation, writing, image understanding/generation, and search-grounded answers, and is integrated across Baidu's search and productivity products. Baidu also offers ERNIE models through its Qianfan developer platform for building custom applications.
Key features
- Free web and mobile chat assistant with voice input
- Search-grounded answers drawing on Baidu's web index
- Image understanding and text-to-image generation
- Document upload and summarization
- Plugin ecosystem for tasks like travel booking or data lookup
- Developer API access to ERNIE models via Baidu's Qianfan platform
How to get started
- Go to yiyan.baidu.com and sign in with a Baidu account
- Start a chat and describe your task in plain language
- Upload a document or image for it to analyze
- Enable a plugin for specialized tasks like search or bookings
- Use the Qianfan platform API for custom application development
Use cases
- Everyday chat and writing assistance for Chinese-speaking users
- Search-grounded question answering using Baidu's index
- Summarizing or extracting information from uploaded documents
- Generating images from a text description
- Building custom applications on top of the ERNIE API
ERNIE Bot vs. alternatives
| Tool | How it compares |
|---|---|
| ERNIE Bot | Baidu's conversational AI assistant, built on its ERNIE large language model family. |
| Doubao | stronger integration with ByteDance's consumer apps instead |
| Qwen | more widely used open-weight alternative |
| DeepSeek | open-weight model with strong reasoning benchmarks |
FAQ
Is ERNIE Bot free to use?
ERNIE Bot's plans: Free to use, with paid API access to the underlying ERNIE models. Pricing and free-tier limits change over time, so check the official site above for the latest details.
What is ERNIE Bot used for?
Baidu's conversational AI assistant, built on its ERNIE large language model family.
Who is ERNIE Bot best for?
ERNIE Bot is a good fit for everyday chat and writing assistance for Chinese-speaking users, or search-grounded question answering using Baidu's index.
What are the alternatives to ERNIE Bot?
Commonly compared alternatives include Doubao, Qwen, and DeepSeek, see the comparison above for how they differ.
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DLast reviewed: 2026-08 · Reviewed by AIKetra editors · How we evaluate tools