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 AI BOOM?

Transforming the nation into a tech superpower has 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 "strategically important" and its foray into the field has actually been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an associated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

Private and public financial investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and revealed promises of real-world organization applications, Chen informed CNA.

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

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The "emphasis on cost benefit" is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and inference costs - the costs of utilizing a trained model to reason from new data.

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

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

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

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, analysts say, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own innovative and cost-effective ways to apply generative AI to jobs and develop advanced items beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's sophisticated AI chips, remains a crucial obstacle for Chinese designers, kept in mind 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 companies ... forcing numerous to count on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and reduce model abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually found imaginative methods to optimize or use more basic hardware effectively, obtaining cutting-edge chips still makes a huge distinction for training extremely big 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 sensitive by the state are censored on the web 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 stay away from 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 logic problems rather!"

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

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

DeepSeek failed to point out that an attack had taken location, highlighting rather 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 elements at play, such as censorship as well as "a couple of practical constraints".

"DeepSeek depends on a mix of older graphics processing systems and has actually limited access to innovative hardware which can affect how rapidly and extensively the design can be trained or updated," she said, pointing to existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language information might likewise limit its flexibility (to bring out) multilingual tasks ... As a fairly brand-new product, DeepSeek likewise hasn't yet been checked as broadly or on the same scale as more established AI designs which postures additional difficulties during real-world deployment."

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

That sought numerous duplicated attempts - four prompts to be exact - in a period of around 20 minutes.

It eventually passed on details about the attack which eliminated 35 individuals and left dozens of others hurt, likewise going on to list details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, as well as casualties.

However, it wrote that "the authorities are performing a thorough examination into the intentions and circumstances surrounding the occurrence", details which is now obsoleted.

The driver, Fan, was carried out last month.

This is Qwen2.5's reaction completely:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a major and tragic event happened in Zhuhai, China. According to numerous news sources, a guy called Fan Weiqiu (樊某, male, 62 years of ages) drove a cars and [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile