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 becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "strategically important" 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 showed guarantees of real-world organization applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's rise that really "encouraged" the idea that smaller players like start-up companies might have functions to play in AI research study and advancements, he includes.

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The "emphasis on expense benefit" is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and inference costs - the expenses of using a trained model to reason from new information.

2025 might likewise see the development of more Chinese AI designs tackling sophisticated reasoning jobs.

"We could see some AI firms concentrating on getting closer to synthetic general intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete methods to commercialise their designs and integrate them with scientific research study," Chen included.

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

Chinese AI business are moving rapidly, experts state, constructing on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical methods to use generative AI to tasks and develop more innovative items beyond chatbots.

But on the other hand, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's sophisticated AI chips, remains an essential hurdle for Chinese developers, noted Dr Marina Zhang, an associate professor at University of Technology Sydney's (UTS) Australia-China Relations Institute.

"US export controls (still) limit the ability of Chinese tech business ... forcing many to rely on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and reduce model abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have discovered innovative methods to enhance or utilize more standard hardware effectively, obtaining advanced chips still makes a big difference for training really large AI designs."

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So how do Chinese AI bots compare against ? 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 web so it must come as not a surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or tell you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests suggest 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 type of question yet. Let's chat about math, coding, and reasoning problems instead!"

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

The automobile attack outside a sports stadium in the southern Chinese city was at first heavily censored on Chinese social media - with authorities just divulging the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to discuss that an attack had happened, highlighting rather a military air show and other events that had actually happened in the city like singles' day shopping sales along with sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang believes that it may be a mix of aspects at play, such as censorship as well as "a couple of useful constraints".

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

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language information might also limit its flexibility (to perform) multilingual jobs ... As a fairly new item, DeepSeek also hasn't yet been tested as broadly or on the same scale as more established AI models which presents additional obstacles throughout real-world implementation."

When it pertained to Qwen2.5, Alibaba's chatbot remarkably addressed our question about the Zhuhai automobile attack.

That wanted several repeated attempts - 4 prompts to be accurate - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It eventually communicated details about the attack which eliminated 35 people and left lots of others injured, likewise going on to list details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, in addition to casualties.

However, it composed that "the cops are carrying out an extensive investigation into the motives and situations surrounding the occurrence", details which is now dated.

The motorist, Fan, was performed last month.

This is Qwen2.5's response completely:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a major and terrible incident happened in Zhuhai, China. According to several news sources, a guy called Fan Weiqiu (樊某, forum.altaycoins.com male, 62 years of ages) drove a car into a crowd at the Zhuhai Sports Center, resulting in a substantial variety of casualties. Here are the essential details:

Date and Time: The event happened on November 11, 2024, at roughly 19:48 PM.

Location: Zhuhai Sports Center, in the Xiangzhou District of Zhuhai.

Casualties: The attack led to 35 deaths and 43 injuries.

Perpetrator: The chauffeur, identified as Fan Weiqiu (male, 62 years old), was apprehended by the police.

Response: The police responded quickly to the scene, and emergency situation services worked to transfer the hurt to healthcare facilities for treatment.

Investigation: The police are carrying out a comprehensive investigation into the motives and situations surrounding the occurrence.

This occasion was extensively reported in the media and triggered significant public concern. The federal government and local authorities have actually been working to provide assistance to the victims and their households, and to ensure a detailed investigation into the incident.

If you need more detailed details or have specific concerns about the incident, do not hesitate to ask.

Despite initial success, subsequent efforts to position the same concern to Qwen2.5 resulted in the censors back at work with the reply "I don't have particular details on occasions that took place in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024".

The altered response also raised concerns about its consistency and wiki.whenparked.com dependability.

Predictably, ChatGPT mentioned public details that had been extensively released in global report at the time of the accident - so no surprises there.

WHICH IS MORE CREATIVE?

Users have praised the capability of Chinese AI apps to provide structured and even "mentally abundant" writing.

"DeepSeek-R1 offered a story with a more reflective tone and smoother emotional shifts for a well-paced story," wrote tech author Amanda Caswell, who specialises in AI.

"Qwen2.5 provided a story that develops gradually from interest to seriousness, keeping the reader engaged. It offers an unanticipated and impactful twist at the end and immersive descriptions and brilliant imagery for the setting," she said, including that Qwen2.5 eventually "crafted a more cinematic, emotionally abundant story with a more substantial twist".

"DeepSeek composed an excellent story however lacked tension and an impactful climax, making Qwen2.5 the apparent choice."

Opinions, however, vary.

Chen thinks that Qwen2.5 does not perform as strongly as DeepSeek and ChatGPT when it pertains to creative writing.

"(Qwen2.5) is on par with DeepSeek V3 on certain jobs, however we can also see that it is refraining from doing as highly as others in innovative writing," he told CNA.

Related:

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'Made in China': Pride, enjoyable surprise from Chinese netizens as DeepSeek shocks international AI scene

As reporters and writers, we had to see this for ourselves so we put each bot to the test - to come up with a basic sci-fi movie plot set in the futuristic megacity of Chongqing, including main characters from the classic Chinese folklore legendary, Journey to the West.

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