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 Xi Jinping's objective and China has its sights on becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "strategically crucial" and raovatonline.org 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 financial investments in Chinese AI accelerated after ChatGPT took off in 2022 and revealed guarantees of real-world business applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that actually "encouraged" the concept that smaller sized players like start-up companies could have roles to play in AI research study and disgaeawiki.info advancements, he includes.

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

2025 could likewise see the development of more Chinese AI models dealing with advanced thinking jobs.

"We could see some AI firms focusing on getting closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete ways to commercialise their models and integrate them with clinical research study," Chen included.

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

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, experts state, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-efficient methods to use generative AI to jobs and establish more sophisticated items beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's sophisticated AI chips, remains a key 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) limit the ability of Chinese tech companies ... requiring many to count on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and decrease design abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have found innovative ways to enhance or use more basic hardware effectively, obtaining innovative chips still makes a big difference for training huge 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 deemed delicate by the state are censored on the web so it should come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile