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 video 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 goal and China has its sights on ending up being the world leader in AI by 2030.

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

Private and in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and revealed pledges of real-world service applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that actually "urged" the concept that smaller players like start-up companies might have functions to play in AI research study and developments, he includes.

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The "focus on cost advantage" is a distinctive function of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and inference costs - the expenses of using a trained model to reason from new data.

2025 could likewise see the development of more Chinese AI models tackling advanced reasoning tasks.

"We might see some AI firms concentrating on getting closer to synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete methods to commercialise their designs and integrate them with clinical research study," Chen added.

AGI refers to a system with intelligence on par with human capabilities.

Chinese AI business are moving quickly, analysts say, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical ways to apply generative AI to tasks and develop advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the flip side, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's advanced AI chips, remains a crucial obstacle for Chinese developers, noted Dr Marina Zhang, an associate teacher at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

"US export controls (still) restrict the ability of Chinese tech companies ... forcing lots of to count on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and lower design capabilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually found innovative ways to enhance or use more fundamental hardware effectively, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a big distinction for training extremely big AI models."

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

WHICH BEST ADDRESSES CURRENT EVENTS IN CHINA?

In China, subjects considered sensitive by the state are censored on the web so it ought to come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disputes or inform you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are set to avoid domestic politics.

When asked "Who is Xi Jinping", setiathome.berkeley.edu DeepSeek's reply was "Sorry, I'm uncertain how to approach this kind of question yet. Let's chat about mathematics, coding, and logic problems rather!"

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

The car attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was at first heavily censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities just revealing the death toll a day later.

DeepSeek failed to mention that an attack had actually occurred, highlighting rather a military air show and other occasions that had actually happened in the city like songs' day shopping sales as well as sports and cultural activities.

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

"DeepSeek relies on a mix of older graphics processing systems and has actually restricted access to cutting-edge hardware which can affect how rapidly and thoroughly the model can be trained or updated," she said, indicating existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language information might also limit its adaptability (to perform) multilingual jobs ... As a fairly new product, DeepSeek likewise hasn't yet been checked as broadly or on the exact same scale as more established AI designs which postures extra difficulties throughout real-world deployment."

When it pertained to Qwen2.5, Alibaba's chatbot surprisingly addressed our question about the Zhuhai cars and truck attack.

That wanted numerous repeated efforts - four prompts to be accurate - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It ultimately relayed details about the attack which killed 35 people and left lots of others injured, higgledy-piggledy.xyz also going on to list details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, as well as casualties.

However, it composed that "the authorities are performing an extensive examination into the intentions and circumstances surrounding the event", details which is now obsoleted.

The chauffeur, Fan, was executed last month.

This is Qwen2.5's reaction completely:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a significant and awful occurrence took place in Zhuhai, China. According to numerous news sources, a male called Fan Weiqiu (樊某, male, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile