Artificial intelligence – DeepSeek, Chat GPT, and more.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek recently made global headlines after dominating app download charts and shaking up US tech stocks.

In January, the company launched its latest AI model, DeepSeek R1, claiming it rivals OpenAI’s ChatGPT in performance while being significantly more cost-effective to develop.

Its rapid rise and competitive potential unsettled investors, wiping billions from Nvidia’s market value and challenging the assumption that American companies would maintain dominance in the fast-growing AI industry.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

To understand DeepSeek's impact, it’s important to first grasp AI’s ability to make computers behave more like humans.

AI technology enables machines to learn and solve problems by analyzing vast amounts of data and identifying patterns. This allows the software to engage in human-like conversations or predict consumer behavior.

In recent years, AI has gained widespread recognition through generative AI models like ChatGPT and DeepSeek. These tools are trained on massive datasets, including online text and images, to generate new content.

However, while powerful, they can also produce misinformation and reinforce biases present in their training data.

Millions rely on AI-powered tools like ChatGPT for everyday tasks, from drafting emails and summarizing text to answering questions, assisting with coding, and even supporting study sessions.

What is DeepSeek AI?

DeepSeek is a free AI-powered chatbot that closely resembles ChatGPT in design, functionality, and use cases. However, its overall effectiveness compared to competitors remains a topic of debate.

Reports suggest DeepSeek R1 matches the capabilities of OpenAI’s o1 model—launched in late 2023—particularly in tasks like mathematics and coding. Like o1, R1 is a "reasoning" model, generating responses step by step to mimic human problem-solving.

One of DeepSeek’s standout achievements is its cost efficiency. Its developers claim the model was trained for just $6 million, a fraction of the "over $100 million" OpenAI CEO Sam Altman referenced for GPT-4.

The company has also managed to minimize the impact of US chip export restrictions. DeepSeek’s founder reportedly stockpiled Nvidia A100 chips—banned from export to China since September 2022—and may have combined them with cheaper, less advanced processors to optimize performance.

DeepSeek further reduces costs by using less memory than its competitors, making its AI assistant more accessible. This combination of efficiency and affordability helped it become the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store upon its US release.

However, on launch day, DeepSeek faced "large-scale malicious attacks," prompting temporary registration limits and website outages.

Like other Chinese AI models—such as Baidu’s Ernie and ByteDance’s Doubao—DeepSeek is programmed to avoid politically sensitive topics.

DeepSeek vs Chat GPT

DeepSeek and ChatGPT represent the cutting edge of AI chatbot technology, each offering unique strengths in a rapidly evolving market. While ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, set the standard for conversational AI, DeepSeek has emerged as a cost-effective challenger. DeepSeek’s R1 model claims to match ChatGPT’s reasoning capabilities, excelling in tasks like mathematics and coding, but at a fraction of the development cost. While OpenAI’s GPT-4 reportedly required over $100 million to train, DeepSeek’s researchers achieved similar results with just $6 million. This budget efficiency is largely due to DeepSeek’s optimized use of hardware, cleverly working around US export restrictions on advanced chips.

However, ChatGPT holds a significant advantage in global brand recognition and consistent performance across diverse applications. OpenAI’s model benefits from extensive training on a broad range of data, offering more refined responses. On the other hand, DeepSeek’s minimal memory usage and lower costs make it more accessible, particularly in markets like China.

Ultimately, DeepSeek’s rapid rise demonstrates the potential for new players to disrupt the AI landscape. While ChatGPT remains a leader, DeepSeek’s innovation and cost-effectiveness present a compelling challenge, raising the question will affordability and agility reshape the future of AI? Are we going to have better AI models in the future?