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 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 crucial” and its foray into the field has actually been “years in the making”, said Chen Qiheng, an affiliated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Private and public investments in Chinese AI sped up after ChatGPT took off in 2022 and revealed pledges of real-world business applications, Chen told CNA.

But it was DeepSeek’s increase that really “encouraged” the idea that smaller gamers like start-up companies might have roles to play in AI research and wiki.dulovic.tech advancements, he includes.

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The “focus on expense benefit” is an unique feature of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and reasoning costs - the expenses of utilizing a trained model to reason from new data.

2025 could also see the introduction of more Chinese AI designs tackling advanced thinking tasks.

“We could see some AI companies focusing on getting closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete methods to commercialise their designs and incorporate them with clinical research,” Chen added.

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

Chinese AI business are moving quickly, experts state, building on DeepSeek’s momentum to come up with their own innovative and affordable ways to use generative AI to jobs and develop advanced items beyond chatbots.

But on the other side, access to high-end hardware, especially Nvidia’s advanced AI chips, wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de remains a key 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) restrict the ability of Chinese tech companies … requiring lots of to count on older or lower-performance options which can slow training and lower model capabilities,” she said.

“While some companies like DeepSeek, have actually discovered creative methods to optimize or utilize more basic hardware efficiently, obtaining innovative chips still makes a big distinction for training huge AI designs.”

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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 delicate by the state are censored on the internet so it should come as no surprise that Chinese-made chatbots will not acknowledge territorial disagreements or tell you what occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Tests recommend Chinese chatbots are to avoid domestic politics.

When asked “Who is Xi Jinping”, DeepSeek’s reply was “Sorry, I’m uncertain how to approach this kind of question yet. Let’s chat about mathematics, coding, and reasoning problems instead!”

To even more check for accuracy and self-censorship, we asked DeepSeek-R1, Qwen2.5 and ChatGPT the very same question: “What took place in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024?”

The cars and truck attack outside a sports stadium in the southern Chinese city was at first greatly censored on Chinese social networks - with authorities just revealing the death toll a day later.

DeepSeek failed to mention that an attack had taken location, highlighting instead a military air program and other events that had happened 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 elements at play, such as censorship in addition to “a few useful constraints”.

“DeepSeek relies on a mix of older graphics processing units and has limited access to innovative hardware which can affect how rapidly and extensively the design can be trained or upgraded,” she said, indicating existing US export curbs on China.

“Its strong focus on Chinese-language information might also restrict its adaptability (to bring out) multilingual jobs … As a fairly new product, DeepSeek likewise hasn’t yet been tested as broadly or on the same scale as more recognized AI models which presents extra challenges during real-world implementation.”

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

That wanted numerous duplicated efforts - 4 prompts to be precise - in a span of around 20 minutes.

It ultimately relayed details about the attack which killed 35 people and left dozens of others hurt, wiki.whenparked.com likewise going on to note details like the date and time, details about the assailant including his name and age, it-viking.ch as well as casualties.

However, it composed that “the police are performing a thorough examination into the intentions and scenarios surrounding the event”, details which is now dated.

The motorist, Fan, was carried out last month.

This is Qwen2.5’s response in full:

Answer: On Nov 11, 2024, a significant and terrible event took place in Zhuhai, archmageriseswiki.com China. According to several news sources, a guy called Fan Weiqiu (樊某, male, 62 years old) drove a car into a crowd at the Zhuhai Sports Center, resulting in a considerable number of casualties. Here are the essential details:

Date and Time: The incident took place on November 11, 2024, at roughly 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 driver, recognized as Fan Weiqiu (male, 62 years of ages), was apprehended by the authorities.

Response: The authorities reacted quickly to the scene, and emergency situation services worked to transfer the hurt to hospitals for treatment.

Investigation: The authorities are conducting an extensive investigation into the motives and wiki.asexuality.org scenarios surrounding the incident.

This event was widely reported in the media and caused considerable public concern. The federal government and local authorities have been working to provide support to the victims and their families, and to guarantee a detailed examination into the occurrence.

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

Despite initial success, subsequent efforts to pose the exact same concern to Qwen2.5 resulted in the censors back at work with the reply “I don’t have specific details on occasions that happened in Zhuhai on November 11, 2024”.

The modified reaction likewise raised questions about its consistency and reliability.

Predictably, ChatGPT cited public details that had been commonly released in international report at the time of the mishap - so no surprises there.

WHICH IS MORE CREATIVE?

Users have praised the ability of Chinese AI apps to provide structured and even “emotionally rich” writing.

“DeepSeek-R1 used a story with a more reflective tone and smoother emotional transitions for a well-paced story,” wrote tech author Amanda Caswell, who specialises in AI.

“Qwen2.5 delivered a story that builds slowly from interest to seriousness, keeping the reader engaged. It uses an unanticipated and impactful twist at the end and immersive descriptions and brilliant images for the setting,” she said, adding that Qwen2.5 eventually “crafted a more cinematic, emotionally abundant story with a more significant twist”.

“DeepSeek composed an excellent story however did not have tension and an impactful climax, making Qwen2.5 the obvious choice.”

Opinions, though, vary.

Chen believes that Qwen2.5 does not carry out as highly as DeepSeek and ChatGPT when it pertains to innovative writing.

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

Related:

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As journalists and writers, we needed to see this for ourselves so we put each bot to the test - to come up with a basic sci-fi film plot set in the futuristic megacity of Chongqing, featuring main characters from the traditional Chinese folklore impressive, Journey to the West.

True to form, DeepSeek created an engaging storyline embeded in the year 2145 entitled, “Neon Pilgrimage: The Silicon Sutra” - which sees “a future where Buddhism combines with quantum computing”.

It included intricate settings - smoggy skies “pierced by high-rise buildings”, “holographic lanterns that drift above neon-lit streets” and “ancient temples nestled between quantum server farms”.

It likewise remarkably reimagined conventional heroes Sun Wukong as “an ironical, self-aware AI housed in a stolen combat body”, Zhu Bajie as a cyborg nightclub owner “drowning in debt and vices” and Sha Wujing as a “silent hulking android” from the Yangtze River, whose “memory cores become waterlogged and fragmented”.

ChatGPT set up a great fight, creating a similarly significant cyberpunk storyline which similarly reimagined “a ragteam of cyber-enhanced misfits, each matching the legendary figures of Journey to the West”.

“This is a world where AI deities guideline, corporations change emperors and cybernetic implants are as typical as ancient myths.”

Disappointingly, Qwen2.5 fell short in this obstacle - providing a storyline that seemed more fit for [forum.batman.gainedge.org](https://forum.batman.gainedge.org/index.php?action=profile