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 start-up 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 actually long been President Xi Jinping's objective and China has its sights on becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "tactically essential" and its venture into the field has been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an affiliated 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 guarantees of real-world organization applications, Chen informed CNA.

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

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The "emphasis on cost benefit" is an unique feature of Chinese AI, Chen states, yewiki.org with lower training and inference costs - the costs of using a trained model to draw conclusions from brand-new information.

2025 could also see the development of more Chinese AI models tackling sophisticated thinking tasks.

"We could see some AI companies concentrating on getting closer to artificial basic intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their models and incorporate them with scientific research," Chen added.

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

Chinese AI business are moving rapidly, experts say, developing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own innovative and cost-efficient methods to apply generative AI to tasks and develop more innovative products beyond chatbots.

But on the flip side, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains a crucial difficulty 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 business ... forcing numerous to count on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and lower design capabilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have found creative ways to optimize or utilize more standard hardware efficiently, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a huge distinction for training huge 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, topics deemed delicate by the state are censored on the internet 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 configured to avoid 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 mathematics, coding, and reasoning problems instead!"

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

The vehicle attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was at first heavily censored on Chinese social media - with authorities only revealing the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to discuss that an attack had actually happened, 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 cultural activities.

Dr Zhang thinks that it might be a mix of elements at play, such as censorship as well as "a few practical constraints".

"DeepSeek relies on a mix of older graphics processing units and has restricted access to advanced hardware which can impact how rapidly and extensively the design can be trained or updated," she said, indicating existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language information may likewise limit its flexibility (to carry out) multilingual tasks ... As a fairly new product, DeepSeek likewise hasn't yet been tested as broadly or on the very same scale as more recognized AI designs which presents extra challenges throughout real-world release."

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