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)

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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 becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being “strategically essential” and wiki.lafabriquedelalogistique.fr 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 financial investments in Chinese AI accelerated after ChatGPT took off in 2022 and revealed promises of real-world company applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek’s increase that really “encouraged” the concept that smaller sized players like start-up firms might have roles to play in AI research study and advancements, he adds.

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The “focus on expense benefit” is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and inference costs - the expenses of utilizing a trained model to reason from new data.

2025 could also see the emergence of more Chinese AI designs dealing with innovative reasoning tasks.

“We might see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete methods to commercialise their models and integrate them with scientific research study,” Chen added.

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

Chinese AI companies are moving quickly, analysts say, developing on DeepSeek’s momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-effective ways to use generative AI to tasks and develop advanced products beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia’s innovative AI chips, remains a key obstacle for Chinese designers, kept in mind 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 companies … requiring numerous to count on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and reduce model capabilities,” she said.

“While some business like DeepSeek, have actually found imaginative methods to enhance or use more basic hardware effectively, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a big distinction for training huge AI designs.”

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So how do Chinese AI bots compare 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 need to come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disputes or inform you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest Chinese chatbots are configured to guide clear of 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 mathematics, coding, and reasoning issues rather!”

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

The car attack outside a sports stadium in the southern Chinese city was at first greatly censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities only revealing the death toll a day later.

DeepSeek failed to mention that an attack had actually happened, [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile