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 nation into a tech superpower has 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 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 showed pledges of real-world service applications, Chen told CNA.

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

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The "emphasis on expense benefit" is a distinct function of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and reasoning expenses - the costs of utilizing a trained design to reason from brand-new information.

2025 could also see the emergence of more Chinese AI models dealing with innovative thinking tasks.

"We could see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to synthetic general intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their models and incorporate them with clinical research study," Chen included.

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

Chinese AI business are moving quickly, experts say, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and cost-effective ways to use generative AI to tasks and raovatonline.org establish more beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, access to high-end hardware, particularly Nvidia's advanced AI chips, remains a key hurdle 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 business ... requiring many to depend on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and reduce model abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually discovered creative methods to enhance or use more standard hardware efficiently, obtaining advanced 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, topics considered sensitive by the state are censored on the internet so it should come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disputes or tell you what occurred 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 type of question yet. Let's chat about math, coding, and reasoning problems rather!"

To even more test 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 cars and truck attack outside a sports arena in the southern Chinese city was initially greatly censored on Chinese social media - with authorities just disclosing the death toll a day later on.

DeepSeek failed to discuss that an attack had happened, highlighting instead a military air show and other occasions that had actually occurred 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 aspects at play, such as censorship in addition to "a couple of useful constraints".

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

"Its strong concentrate on Chinese-language data may also restrict its adaptability (to perform) multilingual tasks ... As a fairly new product, DeepSeek also hasn't yet been checked as broadly or on the same scale as more recognized AI models which postures additional obstacles during real-world implementation."

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

That was after several repeated attempts - 4 prompts to be exact - in a period of around 20 minutes.

It ultimately relayed details about the attack which killed 35 people and left lots of others injured, likewise going on to note details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, as well as casualties.

However, it wrote that "the cops are performing a thorough examination into the motives and circumstances surrounding the occurrence", details which is now dated.

The driver, Fan, was executed last month.

This is Qwen2.5's response completely:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a major and awful occurrence happened in Zhuhai, China. According to multiple news sources, a male called Fan Weiqiu (樊某, male, 62 years old) drove an automobile into a crowd at the Zhuhai Sports Center, leading to a significant variety of casualties. Here are the key details:

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

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

Casualties: The attack resulted in 35 deaths and 43 injuries.

Perpetrator: The motorist, determined as Fan Weiqiu (male, 62 years of ages), was apprehended by the authorities.

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