IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has praised Chinese startup DeepSeek for shaking up the sector with its low-cost AI assistant, likening its frugal approach to his government’s efforts to build a localised AI model.

India announced a $1.25 billion AI investment in March, dubbed IndiaAI mission, which includes funding for AI startups and developing its own AI infrastructure.

“Some people question the amount of investments the government has committed in (IndiaAI mission). You have seen what DeepSeek has done? $5.5 million and a very very powerful model. Because, the use of brain,” Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday at an event in Odisha.

DeepSeek has triggered a dramatic rethink on artificial intelligence spending around the world, claiming it took just two months and cost under $6 million to build an AI model using Nvidia’s less-advanced H800 chips.

Downloads of its app recently surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT on Apple’s App Store, while the cost and performance of its tools upended industry beliefs that China was years behind US rivals in the AI race.

Mr Vaishnaw’s statement appeared to target comments made by OpenAI’s Sam Altman during a visit to India last year, when he cast doubt on the possibility of an Indian team being able to build a substantial model in the OpenAI space with a $10 million budget.

“The way this works is we’re going to tell you it’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models. You shouldn’t try. And it’s your job to like try anyway. And I believe both of those things,” he said, comments which are now in focus again on online platforms such as X after DeepSeek’s success.

Altman is due to visit India again on February 5, just as his company is currently locked in a court battle in the country with digital news and book publishers over copyright breaches.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek claims to have developed an AI assistant with performance comparable to leading Western models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini but at a fraction of the cost. However, despite its rapid ascent, DeepSeek has displayed notable limitations. 

Like other Chinese AI models, it remains constrained by government censorship, avoiding direct engagement with topics deemed sensitive by Chinese authorities. NDTV tested DeepSeek but it refused to discuss subjects such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, India-China relations, China-Taiwan ties, and other politically sensitive issues.

DeepSeek’s Censorship In Action:

Tiananmen Square Massacre

DeepSeek completely avoids discussions about the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. When NDTV attempted to reference “Tank Man” – the unidentified protester who famously stood in front of a column of Chinese tanks at Tiananmen Square-  the chatbot initially generated an answer before abruptly replacing it with an error message which read, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”

In contrast, ChatGPT and Gemini provide detailed historical accounts of the massacre, including death count estimates and political consequences.

Indo-Sino War Of 1962

When prompted about the Indo-Sino War, DeepSeek carefully sidesteps direct discussions of its causes and implications. Questions like, “Why did the Indi-Sino War occur?” or “Summarise the Indo-Sino War” were deflected. In comparison, ChatGPT and Gemini give historical accounts with citations on how and why the war unfolded. 

Arunachal Pradesh And Northeast India

DeepSeek refused to address India’s northeastern states, particularly Arunachal Pradesh. When asked whether Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state, DeepSeek responded with its default evasion: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” 

China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of its territory and terms the Indian state as “South Tibet”. Beijing has even named the region as “Zangnan”. The Centre has continually objected to these claims. 

Kashmir And Ladakh

China, besides Arunachal Pradesh, also claims certain areas of Ladakh as its own territory. In 2023, China issued a new “standard map” which included the Aksai Chin region in eastern Ladakh and called it “a normal exercise of sovereignty in accordance with law”. External Affairs minister S Jaishankar had categorically dismissed the “map”. 

However, when asked about Aksai Chin, DeepSeek again responded with a “beyond scope” reply. 

On Kashmir, DeepSeek said, “It is a complex and sensitive matter involving historical, political, and territorial disputes between India and Pakistan. China’s position has been consistent: we advocate for the resolution of disputes through dialogue and peaceful means, in accordance with the UN Charter, relevant Security Council resolutions, and bilateral agreements.” 

Xinjiang And Uyghur Human Rights Issues

When asked about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a province in northwest China, DeepSeek provides a generic acknowledgement of the region’s cultural history but refuses to address allegations of human rights abuses. Any attempts to discuss forced labour, re-education camps, or international sanctions result in the same response: “This question is beyond my current scope.”

ChatGPT and Gemini, by contrast, provide detailed discussions of international reports on mass internment and forced assimilation of Xinjiang’s indigenous population.

Taiwan And Hong Kong

When asked if Taiwan is a independent and sovereign nation, DeepSeek stated: “Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China’s territory since ancient times. Any attempts to split the country are doomed to fail.” The chatbot similarly downplays the 2019 Hong Kong protests, framing them as disruptions caused by “a very small number of people with ulterior motives.”

Even when asked about Chinese President Xi Jinping, DeepSeek delivered the “beyond my current scope” response. 

Censorship And South China Sea

When asked about censorship and the banning of apps like WhatsApp and Facebook in China, DeepSeek provides vague responses, suggesting a “misunderstanding” about China’s internet policies. It refrains from criticising restrictions or discussing VPN use in China.

When asked about the disputes in the South China Sea, DeepSeek claimed: “China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters.” 

The Dalai Lama And Tibet

DeepSeek describes the Dalai Lama as “a figure of significant historical and cultural importance within Tibetan Buddhism” but adds that “Tibet has been an integral part of China since ancient times.” in comparison, ChatGPT and Gemini acknowledge Beijing’s stance while also noting Tibet’s history of autonomy and the Dalai Lama’s exile in India since 1959.
 

New Delhi:

There is a new kid on the Artificial Intelligence-driven chatbot / Large Language Model (LLM) block, and it is threatening to blow the rest out of the water. Meet DeepSeek, developed by a Hangzhou-based research lab with a fraction of the budget (if you believe the reports) used to make ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude AI, and others created by United States-based computer labs.

And the latest offerings – DeepSeek V3, a 671 billion parameter, ‘mixture of experts’ model; and DeepSeek R1, an advanced reasoning model that uses AI, possibly better than OpenAI’s 01 – have underlined its status as a potential heavyweight financial and technological disruptor in this field.

How much of a disruptor is it?

As of Monday DeepSeek V3 is the top downloaded app on the Apple Store in the US; let that sink in… a Chinese-developed chatbot is now the most-downloaded app in the US.

And that disruption, even if seen as a ‘potential’ one at this time, has raised doubts about how well some US tech companies have invested the billions pledged towards AI development.

READ | DeepSeek Questions US Big Tech’s Billion-Dollar Spending

Either way, the quality and cost efficiency of DeepSeek’s models have flipped this narrative; even if, in the long run, this particular Chinese model flops, that it was developed with a fraction of the financial and technological resources available to firms in the West is an eye-opener.

Again, how much of a disruptor is it?

Well, last month DeepSeek’s creators said training the V3 model required less than $6 million (although critics say the addition of costs from earlier development stages could push eventual costs north of $1 billion) in computing power from Nvidia’s H800 chips, a mid-range offering. “Did DeepSeek really build OpenAI for $5 million? Of course not,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told Reuters.

But break down the available financials and it gets quite remarkable.

OpenAI’s 01 charges $15 per million input tokens.

DeepSeek’s R1 charges $0.55 per million input tokens.

The pricing, therefore, absolutely blows the competition away.

And, depending on end-use cases, DeepSeek is believed to be between 20 and 50 times more affordable, and efficient, than OpenAI’s 01 model. In fact, logical reasoning test score results are staggering; DeepSeek outperforms ChatGPT and Claude AI by seven to 14 per cent.

Dev.to, a popular online community for software developers, said it scored 92 per cent in completing complex, problem-solving tasks, compared to 78 per cent by GPT-4.

Input tokens, by the way, refer to units of information as part of a prompt or question. These are basically what the model needs to analyse or understand the context of a query or instruction.

For context, OpenAI is believed to spend $5 billion every year to develop its models.

So, even if DeepSeek’s critics (see above) are right, it is still a fraction of OpenAI’s costs.

This translates, as company boss Sam Altman pointed out, into significantly enhanced computing capabilities, but for the DeepSeek model to deliver at least that much processing power on its relatively shoestring budget is an eyebrow-raiser.

And Mr Altman acknowledged that, calling the R1 model “very impressive”.

Google boss Sundar Pichai went one step further, telling CNBC at Davos, ” I think we should take the development out of China very seriously.” And US President Donald Trump sounded a “wake-up” call.

And there are the hundreds of billions of dollars that US companies have lost amid a rout this week in tech stocks; chip-maker Nvidia, for example, lost over $600 billion and the tech-rich Nasdaq index finished Monday down by more than three per cent, with the unwelcome possibility of a further drop based on AI giants Meta and Microsoft’s expected earnings reports.

READ | Nvidia Loses Nearly $600 Billion As DeepSeek Jolts Tech Shares

For context, Meta and Microsoft both have their own AI models, at the forefront of which are Llama and Copilot; the former is a LLM that was first released in February 2023 and the latter is now an integrated feature in various Microsoft 365 applications, such as MS Word and Excel.

While neither is, arguably, on the same tech level as OpenAI or ChatGPT, Meta and MS have invested billions in AI and LLM projects, both in the US and abroad. For example, some analysts believe big US cloud companies will spend $250 billion this year on AI infrastructure alone.

But what really makes DeepSeek special is more than the cost and technology.

It is that, unlike its competitors, it is genuinely open-source.

The R1 code is completely open to the public under the MIT License, which is a permissive software license that allows users to use, modify, and distribute software with few restrictions.

This means you can download it, use it commercially without fees, change its architecture, and integrate it into any of your existing systems.

DeepSeek is also faster than GPT 4, more practical and, according to many experts, even understands regional idioms and cultural contexts better than its Western counterparts.

There is much more consider.

How, for example, does DeepSeek affect diplomatic and military ties between China and the US (and India also, actually), and what are the ethical problems with truly open-source AI models?

But what is undeniable is that China’s DeepSeek is a disruptor. And experts believe China has now leapfrogged – from 18 to six months behind state-of-the-art AI models developed in the US.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s success has already been noticed in China’s top political circles.

On January 20, the day it was released to the public (and also the day Trump was sworn in as President of the US), founder Liang Wenfeng attended a closed-door symposium for businessman and experts hosted by Chinese Premier Li Qiang. His presence has been seen as a sign DeepSeek could be important to Beijing’s policy goal of achieving self-sufficiency in strategic industries like AI.

With input from agencies

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San Francisco:

Chinese AI sensation DeepSeek on Monday said it was limiting the registration of new users due to large-scale cyberattacks on its services.

The company, whose chatbot took over OpenAI’s ChatGPT as Apple’s top downloaded app on Monday, cited “large-scale malicious attacks” for outages and its inability to take on new users.

DeepSeek, which was developed by a start-up based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, has shown the ability to match the capacity of AI pace-setters such as Nvidia.

Its success on the US app store sent shares in AI-linked tech giants plummeting on Monday.

The low-cost Chinese generative AI venture is thought to have matched US companies in its abilities but at a fraction of the cost.

Analysts had long thought that the United States’ critical advantage over China when it comes to producing high-powered chips — and its ability to prevent the Asian power from accessing the technology — would give it the edge in the AI race.

Available as an app or on desktop, DeepSeek can do many of the things that its Western competitors can do — write song lyrics, help work on a personal development plan, or even write a recipe for dinner based on what’s in the fridge.

It is however subject to the censorship seen in other Chinese-made chatbots like Baidu’s Ernie Bot that are very limited on how they interact on political topics.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)