Chinese search engine giant Baidu said on Friday it would make its next-generation artificial intelligence model Ernie open-source from June 30, a major shift in strategy as competition heats up.

The company, the operator of China’s most popular search engine, announced the plan today. Reuters reported that the initiative centers on an upcoming family of Ernie models dubbed the Ernie 4.5 series. Baidu will start rolling out the LLM series to users in the coming months and plans to open-source its code on June 30.

Baidu Inc. has taken the unprecedented step of declaring its Ernie AI model free for users, a move that could help the Chinese search giant regain momentum in a race to develop next-generation artificial intelligence.