DeepSeek vs ChatGPT – how do they compare?

The emergence of Chinese language AI app DeepSeek has shocked monetary markets, and prompted US President Donald Trump to describe it as “a wake-up call” for the US tech trade.

DeepSeek’s declare that its R1 synthetic intelligence (AI) mannequin was made at a fraction of the price of its rivals has raised questions about the future about of the whole industry, and brought about some the world’s greatest firms to sink in worth.

DeepSeek has change into essentially the most downloaded free app within the US only a week after it was launched.

So how does it examine to its way more established and apparently way more costly US rivals, corresponding to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini?

If you ask ChatGPT what the most well-liked causes to make use of ChatGPT are, it says that aiding folks to put in writing is considered one of them.

From gathering and summarising data in a useful format to even writing weblog posts on a subject, ChatGPT has change into an AI companion for a lot of throughout totally different workplaces.

As a proud Scottish soccer fan, I requested ChatGPT and DeepSeek to summarise the perfect Scottish soccer gamers ever, earlier than asking the chatbots to “draft a weblog publish summarising the perfect Scottish soccer gamers in historical past”.

DeepSeek responded in seconds, with a high ten listing – Kenny Dalglish of Liverpool and Celtic was primary. It helpfully summarised which place the gamers performed in, their golf equipment, and a quick listing of their achievements.

DeepSeek additionally detailed two non-Scottish gamers – Rangers legend Brian Laudrup, who’s Danish, and Celtic hero Henrik Larsson. For the latter, it added “though Swedish, Larsson is commonly included in discussions of Scottish soccer legends on account of his influence at Celtic”.

For its subsequent weblog publish, it did go into element of Laudrup’s nationality earlier than giving a succinct account of the careers of the gamers.

ChatGPT’s reply to the identical query contained lots of the identical names, with “King Kenny” as soon as once more on the high of the listing.

Its detailed weblog publish briefly and precisely went into the careers of all of the gamers.

It concluded: “Whereas the sport has modified over the a long time, the influence of those Scottish greats stays timeless.” Certainly.

For this enjoyable take a look at, DeepSeek was actually akin to its best-known US competitor.

The emergence of superior AI fashions has made a distinction to individuals who code.

When ChatGPT experienced an outage last week, X had a variety of amusing posts from builders saying they could not do their work with out the trustworthy device by their facet.

How does DeepSeek examine right here?

Javier Aguirre, an AI researcher at Samsung Medical Middle in Seoul, South Korea, specialises in researching in drugs and AI.

In a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, he wrote: “I’m fairly impressed with Deepseek. Whereas coding, we often attempt to explode AI chatbots to the restrict to see their capabilities in aiding with coding.

“Right now I had a extremely difficult and sophisticated downside. Even chatGPT o1 was not capable of cause sufficient to unravel it. I gave a attempt to Deepseek and it solved it directly and straight to the purpose.”

He additionally identified that for coders, the mixture of fashions can result in success. This was echoed by Addy Osmani, who’s the Head of Chrome Developer Expertise at Google.

In a publish to his 208k followers on LinkedIn, he spoke about combining DeepSeek with US AI agency Anthropic’s device Claude Sonnet. In 2023, Amazon invested $4bn into Anthropic.

Mr Osmani stated: “Code with AI? DeepSeek R1 + Claude Sonnet could also be the perfect new hybrid coding mannequin. Sure, engineers are utilizing them collectively.

Mr Osmani additionally stated DeepSeek was “considerably cheaper” to make use of than each Claude Sonnet and OpenAI’s o1 mannequin.

What about brainstorming? I requested ChatGPT and DeepSeek to provide me “concepts for a narrative for kids a few boy who lives on the moon”.

ChatGPT responded in seconds with six neatly summarised concepts. One was a few boy referred to as Max who labored as a postman on the moon and was despatched on an journey. One other was about Oliver, who was drawn by the sounds of a mysterious orchestra made up of aliens.

None of those tales are going to problem Harry Potter or Roald Dahl any time quickly, however it’s a begin for extra refined concepts to flourish maybe.

DeepSeek, however, responded with only one concept – “Luna and the Boy Who Chased the Stars”. Its response was 387 phrases (with no point out of anybody or factor referred to as “Luna”), and comprised a narrative a few curious boy referred to as Milo who lived on the moon.

It struck me that whereas ChatGPT gave me concepts, DeepSeek wrote a full story. It wasn’t notably good, with a easy give attention to a personality going from A to B, however it was a begin – and it was spectacular how rapidly it delivered it.

Certainly one of my recollections from highschool is my historical past trainer explaining to us how the First World Battle happened following a posh state of affairs concerning many European powers, with the battle lastly sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.

How would the chatbots cope with explaining such a posh and nuanced piece of historical past? Fairly properly.

ChatGPT gave an in depth account and outlined the important thing components. DeepSeek’s account was not as detailed, however its temporary overview did cowl all the details and occasions.

Google’s Gemini assistant gave an identical synopsis to ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and in addition gave the consumer the chance to click on on hyperlinks from respected sources such because the Imperial Battle Museum within the UK.

As I noticed on different duties and prompts, DeepSeek was actually akin to its US opponents.

The duties I set the chatbots have been easy however they level to one thing way more vital – the winner of the so-called AI race is much from determined.

For all of the huge sources US companies have poured into the tech, their Chinese language rival has proven their achievements might be emulated.

Prof Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor of Machine Studying at Division of Pc Science and Expertise, on the College of Cambridge, stated this was simply the beginning.

“I feel it is simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kind of innovation we are able to count on in these fashions,” he stated.

He highlighted an instance from historical past – James Watt is synonymous with the steam engine, though he improved it quite than invented it.

“There’s loads of house for budding James Watts to emerge, and that they’re much less prone to come from established gamers,” he stated.