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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 start-up DeepSeek and OpenAI's ChatGPT. (Photos: Reuters/Dado Ruvic, AFP/Sebastien Bozon)

This audio is produced by an AI tool.

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 essential" and its venture into the field has been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an associated 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 told CNA.

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

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The "emphasis on cost advantage" is an unique feature of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and inference expenses - the costs of using a trained model to draw conclusions from new information.

2025 could likewise see the introduction of more Chinese AI designs dealing with sophisticated thinking jobs.

"We might see some AI firms focusing on getting closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete methods to commercialise their designs and integrate them with scientific research study," Chen added.

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

Chinese AI business are moving quickly, experts say, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-effective methods to apply generative AI to jobs and establish advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's innovative 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 ... requiring many to count on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and minimize design abilities," she said.

"While some business like DeepSeek, have actually found imaginative methods to optimize or utilize more fundamental hardware efficiently, obtaining advanced chips still makes a big distinction for training large AI models."

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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, topics deemed sensitive by the state are censored on the internet so it should come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disputes or inform you what occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest Chinese chatbots are programmed to guide clear of domestic politics.

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

To even more evaluate for precision and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and ChatGPT the very same question: "What took place 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 media - with authorities just revealing the death toll a day later.

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

Dr Zhang believes that it might be a mix of aspects at play, such as censorship along with "a couple of practical constraints".

"DeepSeek depends on a mix of older graphics processing systems and has actually limited access to cutting-edge hardware which can impact how rapidly and extensively the design can be trained or upgraded," she said, pointing to existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language data might likewise restrict its adaptability (to bring out) multilingual tasks ... As a fairly brand-new product, DeepSeek also hasn't yet been checked as broadly or on the same scale as more recognized AI models which postures extra challenges during real-world implementation."

When it pertained to Qwen2.5, Alibaba's chatbot remarkably addressed our question about the Zhuhai vehicle attack.

That was after several duplicated attempts - four triggers to be precise - in a period of around 20 minutes.

It eventually communicated details about the attack which killed 35 people and left lots of others injured, likewise going on to note details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, as well as casualties.

However, it wrote that "the authorities are performing an extensive examination into the intentions and situations surrounding the occurrence", details which is now outdated.

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