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 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 foray into the field has been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an affiliated researcher 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 showed guarantees of real-world company applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's increase that actually "encouraged" the idea that smaller sized players like start-up firms could have functions to play in AI research and advancements, he includes.

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The "emphasis on expense benefit" is a distinctive function of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and inference expenses - the expenses of using a trained model to draw conclusions from brand-new information.

2025 could likewise see the development of more Chinese AI designs tackling innovative reasoning tasks.

"We could see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to synthetic basic intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete methods to commercialise their models and integrate them with clinical research," Chen included.

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

Chinese AI business are moving rapidly, experts state, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical methods to apply generative AI to tasks and establish advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains an essential difficulty for larsaluarna.se Chinese designers, noted Dr Marina Zhang, an associate professor at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

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

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually found imaginative ways to enhance or use more fundamental hardware effectively, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a huge distinction 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, topics considered delicate by the state are censored on the web so it should come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or inform you what took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are set to avoid domestic politics.

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

To even more evaluate for precision and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de ChatGPT the exact same question: "What occurred in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024?"

The cars and truck attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was initially greatly censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities just revealing the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to discuss that an attack had occurred, highlighting instead a military air program and other occasions that had happened in the city like songs' day shopping sales in addition to sports and trademarketclassifieds.com cultural activities.

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

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

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

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

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

It ultimately relayed details about the attack which killed 35 people and left dozens of others hurt, also going on to note details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, along with casualties.

However, it composed that "the cops are performing an extensive investigation into the motives and scenarios surrounding the incident", details which is now dated.

The motorist, Fan, was executed last month.

This is Qwen2.5's reaction in complete:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a major and terrible incident happened in Zhuhai, China. According to several news sources, a man named Fan Weiqiu (樊某, male, 62 years of ages) drove a car into a crowd at the Zhuhai Sports Center, resulting in a substantial number of casualties. Here are the crucial details:

Date and Time: The event occurred on November 11, 2024, at approximately 19:48 PM.

Location: Zhuhai Sports Center, in the Xiangzhou District of Zhuhai.

Casualties: [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile