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 start-up DeepSeek and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. (Photos: Reuters/Dado Ruvic, AFP/Sebastien Bozon)

This audio is created by an AI tool.

Bong Xin Ying

Lakeisha Leo

WHAT’S BEHIND CHINA’S AI BOOM?

Transforming the nation 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 “strategically essential” and its foray 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 showed pledges of real-world business applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek’s increase that really “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 advantage” is a distinctive 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 might likewise see the development of more Chinese AI models taking on innovative reasoning jobs.

“We might see some AI firms concentrating on getting closer to synthetic general intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their designs and integrate them with clinical research study,” Chen included.

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

Chinese AI business are moving quickly, experts state, building on DeepSeek’s momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical ways to use generative AI to tasks and develop more advanced items beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia’s innovative AI chips, remains an essential hurdle 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) restrict the capability of Chinese tech companies … requiring lots of to count on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and decrease design abilities,” she said.

“While some business like DeepSeek, have discovered imaginative methods to enhance or utilize more standard hardware efficiently, obtaining advanced chips still makes a big difference 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, topics considered sensitive by the state are censored on the internet so it ought to come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or tell you what took place in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest 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 issues instead!”

To further check for precision and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and ChatGPT the same concern: “What took place in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024?”

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

DeepSeek failed to mention that an attack had actually happened, highlighting instead a military air show and other occasions that had taken place in the city like songs’ day shopping sales along with sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang believes that it might be a mix of factors at play, such as censorship along with “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 quickly and thoroughly the model can be trained or updated,” she said, pointing to existing US export curbs on China.

“Its strong focus on Chinese-language data may also limit its versatility (to perform) multilingual tasks … As a fairly new product, DeepSeek also hasn’t yet been checked as broadly or on the very same scale as more recognized AI designs which poses extra challenges during real-world deployment.”

When it pertained to Qwen2.5, Alibaba’s chatbot surprisingly answered our concern about the Zhuhai automobile attack.

That sought several repeated attempts - 4 prompts to be accurate - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It ultimately relayed details about the attack which eliminated 35 people and left lots of others injured, likewise going on to list details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, along with casualties.

However, it wrote that “the police are carrying out an extensive examination into the motives and circumstances surrounding the incident”, details which is now outdated.

The motorist, Fan, was executed last month.

This is Qwen2.5’s reaction completely:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a major and tragic event occurred in Zhuhai, China. According to numerous news sources, a guy named Fan Weiqiu (樊某, male, 62 years old) drove an automobile into a crowd at the Zhuhai Sports Center, leading to a considerable number of casualties. Here are the essential details:

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

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

Casualties: The attack led to 35 deaths and 43 injuries.

Perpetrator: The driver, identified as Fan Weiqiu (male, 62 years old), was captured by the police.

Response: The authorities responded rapidly to the scene, and emergency services worked to carry the hurt to healthcare facilities for treatment.

Investigation: The police are conducting an extensive investigation into the motives and circumstances surrounding the event.

This occasion was widely reported in the media and triggered substantial public concern. The federal government and local authorities have actually been working to supply support to the victims and their households, and to ensure a detailed examination into the occurrence.

If you need more detailed details or have specific questions about the event, feel totally free to ask.

Despite initial success, subsequent attempts to pose the very same question to Qwen2.5 led to the censors back at work with the reply “I don’t have specific details on occasions that occurred in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024”.

The altered response also raised questions about its consistency and dependability.

Predictably, ChatGPT mentioned public details that had been extensively published in international news reports at the time of the mishap - so no surprises there.

WHICH IS MORE CREATIVE?

Users have praised the ability of Chinese AI apps to provide structured and even “emotionally rich” writing.

“DeepSeek-R1 offered a story with a more reflective tone and smoother emotional transitions for a well-paced story,” composed tech writer Amanda Caswell, who specialises in AI.

“Qwen2.5 delivered a story that develops slowly from curiosity to seriousness, keeping the reader engaged. It provides an unexpected and impactful twist at the end and immersive descriptions and brilliant imagery for the setting,” she said, including that Qwen2.5 eventually “crafted a more cinematic, emotionally rich story with a more substantial twist”.

“DeepSeek composed an excellent story however did not have tension and an impactful climax, making Qwen2.5 the evident option.”

Opinions, however, differ.

Chen believes that Qwen2.5 does not perform as strongly as DeepSeek and ChatGPT when it pertains to imaginative writing.

”(Qwen2.5) is on par with DeepSeek V3 on certain tasks, however we can likewise see that it is refraining from doing as strongly as others in imaginative writing,” he informed CNA.

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As reporters and authors, we needed to see this for ourselves so we put each bot to the test - to come up with a fundamental sci-fi film plot embeded in the futuristic megacity of Chongqing, including main characters from the traditional Chinese folklore impressive, Journey to the West.

True to form, DeepSeek developed an interesting story set in the year 2145 entitled, “Neon Pilgrimage: The Silicon Sutra” - which sees “a future where Buddhism combines with quantum computing”.

It included elaborate settings - smoggy skies “pierced by skyscrapers”, “holographic lanterns that float above neon-lit streets” and “ancient temples nestled between quantum server farms”.

It also remarkably reimagined standard heroes Sun Wukong as “an ironical, self-aware AI housed in a taken fight body”, Zhu Bajie as a cyborg bar owner “drowning in debt and vices” and Sha Wujing as a “quiet hulking android” from the Yangtze River, whose “memory cores become waterlogged and fragmented”.

ChatGPT set up an excellent fight, coming up with an equally significant which likewise reimagined “a ragteam of cyber-enhanced misfits, each matching the famous figures of Journey to the West”.

“This is a world where AI deities guideline, corporations replace emperors and cybernetic implants are as common as ancient misconceptions.”

Disappointingly, Qwen2.5 fell short in this challenge - delivering a storyline that seemed more fit for an animation movie.

“The film begins with the awakening of Sun Wukong within a state-of-the-art research facility located in the heart of Chongqing,” it said, then going on to explain the following:

Realising his brand-new reality and “looking for to understand his purpose in this odd brand-new world”, he then leaves and fulfills Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing - “each having problem with their own existential crises”.

The trio then starts a mission, forum.altaycoins.com navigating the streets of Chongqing to protect the sacred “Eternal Scroll” from falling into the wrong hands.

SO WHICH IS BETTER?

Dr Zhang kept in mind that it was “challenging to make a conclusive statement” about which bot was best, adding that each showed its own strengths in various locations, “such as language focus, training information and hardware optimization”.

Her insight underscores how Chinese AI designs are not simply reproducing Western paradigms, however rather developing in cost-effective innovation methods - and delivering localised and improved results.

In our tests, each bot showcased their own special strengths, which certainly made direct contrasts challenging.

DeepSeek’s sci-fi film plot demonstrated its innovative flair that produced a more appealing and imaginative narrative as compared to Qwen2.5 and ChatGPT’s efforts.

Unsurprisingly, the more recognized ChatGPT, unburdened by Chinese censorship constraints, supplies precise and factual actions to questions about Chinese present occasions, which provides it an added advantage.

Experts likewise weighed in on their ideas after utilizing DeepSeek and other Chinese AI apps.

“DeepSeek is at a drawback when it pertains to censorship constraints,” kept in mind Isaac Stone Fish, founder and CEO of the research company Strategy Risks.

“When given an option, Chinese users desire the non-censored variation - similar to anyone else, so I feel like that’s a piece missing out on from it.”

Independent Beijing-based specialist Andy Chen Xinran said censorship would not be a dealbreaker when it pertains to AI bots, particularly for Chinese users.

“Ninety per cent of people using the tool are not trying to get a much deeper understanding about Xi Jinping or politically sensitive subjects. They’re using it for other productive methods,” Chen said.