Chinese AI app Deepseek is soaring in popularity, startling rivals

AI assistant created by Chinese startup Deepseek It became the number one most downloaded app in Apple’s US app store over the weekend, sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley and sending the price of major tech stocks tumbling. Nvidia saw more than 460 billion dollars It was wiped off its market capitalization on Monday, a drop Bloomberg characterized as “the largest in US stock market history.”

SHEAKUP stems from an open-source model developed by DeepSeek called R1, which debuted earlier this month. The company said it rivals the current industry leader: Openai’s 01. But what stunned the tech industry the most was that DeepSeek claimed to have built its model using only a fraction of the specialized computer chips that AI companies typically need to develop cutting-edge systems.

On Monday, DeepSeek said it was temporarily limiting new registrations, citing “large-scale malicious attacks” on the company’s services, according to A message On his website.

Deepseek’s R1 model “challenges the idea that Western AI companies have a significant lead over Chinese ones,” Jack Clarke, co-founder of AI startup Anthrop, said. wrote In his newsletter. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen named This “Ai Sputnik moment”.

Chen Lu, a researcher at Openai, said DeepSeek’s chatbot demonstrated impressive Chinese conversational skills. “This is the first time I feel the beauty of the Chinese language created by a chatbot,” he said In X post on Sunday.

DeepSeek’s AI assistant is currently available for free and comes with three main features. First, users can ask the chatbot questions and get direct answers. For example, when Wired asked for recipe ideas involving pomegranate seeds, Deepseek’s chatbot quickly provided a list of 15 options, ranging from yogurt perfumes to “Middle Eastern-inspired” rice pilaf, but did not cite specific chefs or recipes.

DeepSeek’s app also has a search mode that surfaces answers from the internet. When Wired asked “What are some important news stories today?” Deepseek’s chatbot cited the Israel-Hama ceasefire and linked to several Western news outlets such as BBC News, but not all of the stories seemed relevant to the topic. Ironically, one was a New York Times story about Deepseek’s impact on the stock market.

Finally, there’s a “Deep Think” mode that lets users tap into DeepSeek’s R1 model, which builds on the company’s existing V3 model. The difference between the two is that R1 has so-called “reasoning” abilities that allow it to explain step-by-step how it arrived at its conclusions. For example, when asked “What are the most important historical events of the 20th century?” DeepSeek initially gave a long meandering answer that began with a series of broad questions.

“It’s been a hundred years, so a lot has happened,” read part of his response. “I should probably break it down by decades or major topics like wars, political changes, technological advances, social movements, etc.” Deepseek’s chatbot then went on to cite World War II, the Cold War, and the Holocaust.

But before R1 could finish his answer, the entire answer disappeared and was replaced by a message that read “Sorry, I’m not sure how to approach this type of question. Let’s talk math, coding, and logic problems instead! A number of experts and early adopters have noted This Deepseek, like other technology platforms that operate in China, it seems Extensive censorship Topics considered sensitive by the Chinese Communist Party

But despite these limitations, DeepSeek’s free chatbot could pose a serious threat to rivals like Openai, which charges $20 a month for access to its most powerful AI models. Unlike its Chinese counterpart, Openai does not disclose the underlying “weights” of its models that determine how the AI ​​processes information. He also declined to make public the full “chains of thought” Produced by its own reasoning patterns.