Baidu ERNIE and ERNIE Bot: AI Search and Baiduspider
Baidu uses ERNIE models in the ERNIE Bot app and for AI answers in Baidu Search. Which crawler collects pages, and the robots.txt controls.
ERNIE is the family of large language models from Baidu, and Baidu uses it to rebuild Baidu Search with AI answers. Baidu does not document a separate crawler or robots.txt token for ERNIE that we found. For a site owner, the documented control is robots.txt for Baiduspider, the Baidu search crawler.
What ERNIE is
ERNIE is a family of foundation models. A foundation model is a large AI model that other products are built on. Baidu open-sourced the ERNIE 4.5 series in June 2025. That series has ten models with different architectures and sizes.
The ERNIE blog announces new models. It announced ERNIE 5.0 on February 6, 2026, and ERNIE 5.1 on May 9, 2026.
The ERNIE Bot app
ERNIE Bot is the chat app that uses these models. Its original Chinese name is 文心一言 (Wenxin Yiyan). On September 4, 2024, Baidu renamed the app to 文小言 (Wenxiaoyan) and positioned it as a “new search” assistant (Yicai, SCMP). The ERNIE blog links “ERNIE Bot” to wenxin.baidu.com, and the older address yiyan.baidu.com redirects there. On October 22, 2026, that page had the title 百度文心助手 (Baidu Wenxin Assistant). The ERNIE blog posts do not explain how ERNIE Bot searches the web, which crawler gets pages for it, or how it shows sources.
ERNIE in Baidu Search
On the earnings call for the fourth quarter of 2023, Baidu CEO Robin Li said: “We are reconstructing Baidu Search using Ernie.” He also said that Baidu used ERNIE to generate search results (call transcript).
The Baidu results for the second quarter of 2025, dated August 20, 2025, give these numbers:
| Date | Share of mobile search result pages with AI-generated content |
|---|---|
| April 2025 | 35% |
| End of June 2025 | Over 50% |
| July 2025 | 64% |
Baidu said that AI answers progressively replace the traditional results with links.
Which crawler collects pages
Baidu Search gets pages with Baiduspider. The Baiduspider guide gives its user agents. We found no Baidu page that names a separate user agent or robots.txt token for ERNIE or for the AI answers in search. The guide also gives the robots.txt groups and the meta tags that Baidu reads.
What blocking does not tell you
Baidu does not say if a Baiduspider block also keeps your content out of ERNIE training or ERNIE answers. Baidu only documents that a block keeps the content of your pages out of Baidu search. If you block Baiduspider, your pages lose their place in Baidu search.