ChainCatcher news, according to Jinshi reports, informed sources revealed that Baidu (BIDU.O) plans to release its next-generation artificial intelligence model in the second half of this year.Sources say that the "foundation model" known as Ernie 5.0 will have significant enhancements in multimodal capabilities, but did not specify its features. "Multimodal" AI can process text, video, images, and audio, and combine them together, as well as convert across categories— for example, converting text to video and vice versa. The foundation model can understand language and perform a wide range of tasks, including generating text and images, as well as communicating in natural language.Currently, Chinese companies are racing to develop innovative artificial intelligence models to compete with OpenAI and other American companies.