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 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 essential" and its venture 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 investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT took off in 2022 and revealed pledges of real-world company applications, Chen told CNA.

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

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The "focus on cost advantage" is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and reasoning costs - the expenses of using a trained model to draw conclusions from new information.

2025 might also see the development of more Chinese AI designs tackling sophisticated reasoning tasks.

"We could see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete ways to commercialise their models and integrate them with scientific research," Chen included.

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

Chinese AI business are moving rapidly, experts say, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own innovative and cost-efficient ways to use generative AI to jobs and hb9lc.org develop advanced items beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's advanced AI chips, remains a key difficulty for Chinese developers, 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 business ... forcing numerous to rely on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and decrease design abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually found innovative methods to optimize or use more fundamental hardware effectively, obtaining innovative chips still makes a big difference for training large AI models."

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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, subjects considered sensitive by the state are censored on the web so it ought to come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disputes or inform you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are set 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 math, coding, and logic issues instead!"

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

The vehicle attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was initially greatly censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities only divulging the death toll a day later.

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