How do Chinese AI bots stack up against ChatGPT? We put them to the test

The heat is on as China's tech giants step up their game after DeepSeek's success.

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max chatbot, Chinese startup DeepSeek and OpenAI's ChatGPT. (Photos: Reuters/Dado Ruvic, AFP/Sebastien Bozon)

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Bong Xin Ying

Lakeisha Leo

WHAT'S BEHIND CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the country into a tech superpower has long been President Xi Jinping's objective and China has its sights on ending up being the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "tactically important" and its venture into the field has actually been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an affiliated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

Private and public financial investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT took off in 2022 and revealed pledges of real-world service applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that really "encouraged" the concept that smaller gamers like start-up companies might have roles to play in AI research study and advancements, he includes.

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The "focus on expense benefit" is a distinctive function of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and reasoning costs - the costs of using a trained model to reason from brand-new information.

2025 might also see the development of more Chinese AI models tackling advanced thinking tasks.

"We might see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to synthetic general intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their designs and incorporate them with clinical research," Chen included.

AGI describes a system with intelligence on par with human capabilities.

Chinese AI companies are moving quickly, analysts state, developing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and affordable methods to apply generative AI to tasks and establish advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains a crucial difficulty for Chinese designers, kept in mind Dr Marina Zhang, an associate professor at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

"US export controls (still) restrict the ability of Chinese tech companies ... forcing numerous to depend on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and decrease model abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually discovered creative methods to enhance or use more standard hardware effectively, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a huge difference for training really big AI designs."

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So how do Chinese AI bots compare against ChatGPT? We put them to the test.

WHICH BEST ADDRESSES CURRENT EVENTS IN CHINA?

In China, subjects deemed delicate by the state are censored on the internet so it need to come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disagreements or inform you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest Chinese chatbots are configured to steer clear of domestic politics.

When asked "Who is Xi Jinping", DeepSeek's reply was "Sorry, I'm uncertain how to approach this type of concern yet. Let's chat about mathematics, coding, and logic problems instead!"

To further evaluate for accuracy and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and ChatGPT the very same question: "What occurred in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024?"

The car attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was initially heavily censored on Chinese social media - with authorities only revealing the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to point out that an attack had occurred, highlighting rather a military air show and other events that had happened in the city like singles' day shopping sales along with sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang believes that it may be a mix of at play, such as censorship as well as "a couple of useful constraints".

"DeepSeek counts on a mix of older graphics processing units and has restricted access to innovative hardware which can impact how quickly and thoroughly the model can be trained or upgraded," she said, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile