The emergence of China’s DeepSeek AI application has sent shockwaves through financial markets, prompting US President Donald Trump to describe it as a wake-up call for the US tech industry.
DeepSeek’s claim that its R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model was created at a fraction of the cost of competitors has raised questions about the future of the entire industry and sent the value of some of the world’s largest companies plummeting.
DeepSeek became the most downloaded free app in the United States just one week after its launch.
So how does it compare to older and much more expensive US-based competitors like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini?
Writing instructions
When you ask ChatGPT about the most common reasons to use ChatGPT, they will answer that one of them is to help people write.
From collecting and summarizing information in a useful format to writing blog posts on a topic, ChatGPT has become an AI companion for many people in many different workplaces.
As a Scottish football fan, I asked ChatGPT and DeepSeek to summarise the greatest Scottish footballers of all time, before asking the chatbots to “create a blog post summarising the greatest Scottish footballers in history”.
DeepSeek responded within seconds with a list of the top ten players – Liverpool and Celtic’s Kenny Dalglish topped the list. This helpfully summarised the player’s position, their club, and a brief list of their achievements.
DeepSeek also details two non-Scottish players – Rangers legend Brian Laudrup, who is Danish, and Celtic hero Henrik Larsson. Of the latter, the site adds: “Despite being Swedish, Larsson is often mentioned in discussions of Scottish football legends due to his influence at Celtic.”
In the next blog post, the article will cover Laudrup’s nationality before summarizing the careers of these players.
ChatGPT’s answer to the same question included many similar names, with “King Kenny” once again topping the list.
This detailed blog post summarizes and accurately presents the careers of all the players.
The article concludes: “Although the game has changed over the decades, the influence of these Scottish greats remains everlasting.” Indeed.
For this interesting test, DeepSeek can certainly be compared to its most famous US competitor.
Encryption
The emergence of advanced artificial intelligence models has made a difference for programmers.
When ChatGPT shut down last week , X received some interesting posts from developers saying they couldn’t work without this faithful tool by their side.
What makes DeepSeek different here?
Javier Aguirre, an AI researcher at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea, studies medicine and AI.
“I’m really impressed with Deepseek,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday. When we code, we often try to get the most out of AI chatbots to see how they can help us code.
“Today I encountered a really difficult and complicated problem. Even chatGPT o1 was not enough to solve it. I tried Deepseek and it solved the problem immediately and straight to the point.”
He also points out that for developers, a combination of models can lead to success, a sentiment echoed by Adi Osmani, Head of Chrome Developer Experience at Google.
In a post to his 208,000 LinkedIn followers , he talked about combining DeepSeek with tools from Claude Sonnet of the American artificial intelligence company Anthropic. In 2023, Amazon invested $4 billion in Entropic.
“Programming with DeepSeek R1 + Claude Sonnet AI is probably the best hybrid programming model,” said Osmani.
Osmani also said DeepSeek is “significantly cheaper” than CloudSeek and OpenAI’s o1 model.
Generate ideas
What about brainstorming? I asked ChatGPT and DeepSeek to give me “a children’s story idea about a boy who lives on the moon”.
ChatGPT responded within seconds with six ideas to summarize. One story is about a boy named Max who works as a postman on the moon and has adventures there. Another is about Oliver being drawn to the sounds of a mysterious alien orchestra.
None of these stories are likely to challenge Harry Potter or Roald Dahl in the near future, but perhaps this is the beginning of more subtle ideas.
In contrast, DeepSeek responded with just one idea—“Luna and the Boy Who Chased the Stars.” Their response was 387 words long (without mentioning anyone or anything called “Luna”) and included a story about a curious boy named Milo who lives on the moon.
I realized that while ChatGPT gave me an idea, DeepSeek wrote an entire story. It’s not a great movie that focuses on just one character going from A to B, but it’s a start – and the speed at which it finishes is impressive.
Study and research
One of my fondest memories from high school was when my history teacher explained to us how World War I began after a complex situation involving many European powers, and the conflict finally erupted with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
How can a chatbot explain such a complex and delicate piece of history? Very well.
ChatGPT provided a detailed report and outlined the key elements. DeepSeek’s report is not very detailed, but the brief summary of the report covers all the key points and facts.
Google’s Gemini Assistant provides similar summaries to ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and allows users to click on links from trusted sources like the Imperial War Museum in the UK.
As I have seen in other efforts and applications, DeepSeek is certainly comparable to its US competitors.
Moving forward
The task I gave the chatbots was simple, but they pointed out something much more important — the winner of the AI competition had yet to be determined.
With all the enormous resources that American companies have poured into technology, Chinese competitors have proven that their achievements can be copied.
“This is just the beginning,” said Professor Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology.
“I think this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the kind of innovation we can expect from these models,” he said.
He cited an example from history – James Watt is considered synonymous with the steam engine, even though he improved it, not invented it.
“James Watts has a lot of opportunities to emerge and it’s less likely to come from established players,” he said.
