Deepseek is the name of a free artificial intelligence (AI) model created by a Chinese company. It was released on January 20th, 2025, less than 2 weeks ago at the time of writing this article, and it has already been making big headlines. Its emergence has become a true competitor to ChatGPT, a highly capable OpenAI model that is significant for many reasons.
DeepSeek was built on a budget of $5.6 million, while AI programs like ChatGPT required billions and billions of dollars to build and function. This is made even more impressive taking into account that the U.S actively restricts exports on cutting-edge performance AI chips to China.Ā
Due to DeepSeekā€™s introduction into the mainstream, all kinds of technology stocks dropped sharply in value, especially NVIDIA, the company responsible for creating high performance AI chips. This is likely due to the fact that billions of dollars were and still are constantly being invested in U.S artificial intelligence models, but were quickly outdone by DeepSeekā€™s $5.6 million model.
Preliminary testing shows that DeepSeek performs very similarly to the current ChatGPT model. It seems to operate at a similar speed, giving responses nearly as quickly as ChatGPT does. However, DeepSeek seems to excel more with technical and scientific tasks, whereas ChatGPT is a better general resource, having a wider range of knowledge. ChatGPT is currently better at writing out essays or posts while sounding human-like, while DeepSeek tends to summarize and be more concise.Ā
Some people are claiming that DeepSeek is being censored by the Chinese government, on topics that concern Taiwanā€™s affiliation with China, or the Tiananmen Square massacre amongst others. Additionally, with Congress recently banning TikTok over security concerns, the future of China-based applications remains uncertain.
The future of artificial intelligence, and whether ChatGPT or DeepSeek will lead the industry, remains a topic of ongoing debate for now. Both have their pros and cons, so it remains to be seen which one will be preferred by consumers in the United States.Ā