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 lags CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the country into a tech superpower has actually long been President Xi Jinping's goal and China has its sights on ending up being the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "tactically crucial" and 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 promises of real-world company applications, Chen told CNA.

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

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The "focus on expense advantage" is an unique function of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and inference costs - the costs of utilizing a trained model to reason from new data.

2025 could also see the emergence of more Chinese AI models tackling advanced thinking tasks.

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

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

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, analysts state, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical ways to apply generative AI to tasks and develop advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's sophisticated AI chips, remains a key hurdle 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) restrict the capability of Chinese tech business ... forcing lots of to rely 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 enhance or utilize more standard hardware effectively, obtaining advanced chips still makes a huge difference for training very big 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 internet so it ought to come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or tell you what took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are set to stay away from 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 logic issues rather!"

To even more evaluate 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 automobile 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 point out that an attack had taken location, highlighting instead a military air program and other occasions that had happened in the city like songs' day shopping sales as well as sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang believes that it may be a mix of factors at play, such as censorship along with "a few practical constraints".

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

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language information might likewise restrict its versatility (to carry out) multilingual jobs ... As a fairly brand-new product, DeepSeek likewise hasn't yet been checked as broadly or on the same scale as more recognized AI designs which postures additional obstacles throughout real-world implementation."

When it pertained to Qwen2.5, Alibaba's chatbot surprisingly answered our question about the Zhuhai vehicle attack.

That sought multiple repeated efforts - four triggers to be accurate - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It ultimately passed on details about the attack which eliminated 35 individuals and left lots of others injured, also going on to list details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile