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)

This audio is generated by an AI tool.

Bong Xin Ying

Lakeisha Leo

WHAT'S BEHIND CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the nation into a tech superpower has long been President Xi Jinping's goal and China has its sights on becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "strategically crucial" 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 investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and revealed pledges of real-world organization applications, Chen informed CNA.

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

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The "emphasis on expense benefit" is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and reasoning expenses - the expenses of utilizing a trained design to draw conclusions from new data.

2025 could likewise see the introduction of more Chinese AI models tackling sophisticated reasoning jobs.

"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 scientific research," Chen added.

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

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, analysts say, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-efficient methods to apply generative AI to jobs and develop advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains a key difficulty for Chinese developers, noted Dr Marina Zhang, an associate professor at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

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

"While some business like DeepSeek, have discovered innovative ways to enhance or use more basic hardware effectively, obtaining advanced chips still makes a huge distinction for training large 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 sensitive by the state are censored on the internet so it ought to come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disagreements or inform you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are programmed to avoid domestic politics.

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

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

The vehicle attack outside a sports stadium in the southern Chinese city was initially greatly censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities just disclosing the death toll a day later on.

failed to point out that an attack had actually taken place, highlighting instead a military air program and other events that had happened in the city like singles' day shopping sales as well as sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang believes that it might be a mix of elements at play, such as censorship in addition to "a few practical constraints".

"DeepSeek relies on a mix of older graphics processing systems and has actually restricted access to advanced hardware which can impact how quickly and thoroughly the model can be trained or upgraded," she said, indicating existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language data may likewise restrict its flexibility (to perform) multilingual jobs ... As a fairly brand-new product, DeepSeek also hasn't yet been evaluated as broadly or on the very same scale as more established AI models which presents additional challenges throughout real-world release."

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

That was after multiple duplicated attempts - 4 prompts to be precise - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It ultimately relayed details about the attack which eliminated 35 individuals and wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de left dozens of others injured, 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 wrote that "the cops are conducting a thorough examination into the intentions and situations surrounding the event", details which is now outdated.

The motorist, Fan, pediascape.science was performed last month.

This is Qwen2.5's action completely:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile