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 objective 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 venture 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 investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and revealed guarantees of real-world service applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's rise that actually "urged" the concept that smaller gamers like start-up firms could have functions to play in AI research and developments, he adds.

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

2025 could likewise see the development of more Chinese AI designs dealing with advanced reasoning tasks.

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

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

Chinese AI business are moving quickly, analysts say, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-effective ways to use generative AI to tasks and establish advanced items beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, surgiteams.com access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's innovative AI chips, remains an essential obstacle 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) limit the capability of Chinese tech companies ... requiring numerous to depend on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and lower model capabilities," she said.

"While some business like DeepSeek, have found innovative methods to enhance or use more basic hardware efficiently, obtaining innovative chips still makes a big distinction for training extremely big AI designs."

DeepSeek-Nvidia chips: [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile