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 lags CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the nation 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 crucial" and its foray 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 public investments in Chinese AI accelerated after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and showed guarantees of real-world service applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that truly "encouraged" the concept that smaller gamers like start-up companies could have functions to play in AI research and developments, he adds.

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The "focus on cost benefit" is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and reasoning expenses - the costs of utilizing a trained model to reason from brand-new information.

2025 might also see the development of more Chinese AI models taking on innovative reasoning jobs.

"We might see some AI firms focusing on getting closer to synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their models and integrate them with scientific research study," Chen included.

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

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, analysts say, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own innovative and cost-efficient ways to apply generative AI to tasks and establish advanced items beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, wiki.dulovic.tech access to high-end hardware, kousokuwiki.org especially Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains a crucial difficulty for Chinese designers, noted Dr Marina Zhang, an associate teacher at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

"US export controls (still) limit the capability of Chinese tech companies ... requiring numerous to rely on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and lower model capabilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually discovered imaginative methods to optimize or use more basic hardware effectively, obtaining advanced chips still makes a huge distinction for training very big AI designs."

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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 deemed sensitive by the state are censored on the web so it ought to come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or inform you what occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are programmed to steer clear of domestic politics.

When asked "Who is Xi Jinping", DeepSeek's reply was "Sorry, I'm uncertain how to approach this kind of question yet. Let's chat about math, coding, and reasoning issues instead!"

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

The cars and truck attack outside a sports stadium in the southern Chinese city was initially heavily censored on Chinese social media - with authorities only divulging the death toll a day later on.

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

Dr Zhang thinks that it may be a mix of factors at play, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile