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 video 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'S BEHIND CHINA'S AI BOOM?

Transforming the nation into a tech superpower has 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 important" and its foray into the field has been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, it-viking.ch an affiliated 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 pledges of real-world organization applications, Chen informed CNA.

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

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The "emphasis on cost advantage" is an unique function of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and inference expenses - the expenses of using a trained design to reason from new information.

2025 could also see the emergence of more Chinese AI designs dealing with sophisticated thinking tasks.

"We might see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to artificial basic intelligence (AGI) while others concentrate on concrete ways to commercialise their designs and integrate them with scientific research study," Chen added.

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

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

But on the flip side, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia's advanced AI chips, remains a key obstacle for Chinese developers, 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 business ... requiring lots of to depend on older or lower-performance alternatives which can slow training and decrease design abilities," she said.

"While some companies like DeepSeek, have discovered imaginative methods to enhance or utilize more basic hardware efficiently, obtaining advanced chips still makes a huge distinction for training large AI models."

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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, subjects deemed delicate by the state are censored on the web so it must come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial conflicts or inform you what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are programmed 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 concern yet. Let's chat about math, coding, and reasoning issues instead!"

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

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

DeepSeek failed to mention that an attack had taken location, highlighting instead a military air show and other events that had actually taken place in the city like songs' day shopping sales as well as sports and cultural activities.

Dr Zhang thinks that it may be a mix of factors at play, such as censorship along with "a few practical constraints".

"DeepSeek depends on a mix of older graphics processing units and has limited access to advanced hardware which can impact how rapidly and thoroughly the model can be trained or updated," she said, pointing to existing US export curbs on China.

"Its strong focus on Chinese-language information might also limit its flexibility (to perform) multilingual tasks ... As a fairly new item, DeepSeek likewise hasn't yet been evaluated as broadly or on the very same scale as more recognized AI designs which positions additional obstacles during real-world release."

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