Generative Artificial Intelligence, the AI that helps computers feel like people, has taken the global market space by storm. As of 2024, startup companies and corporations alike invested up to $142.3 billion into the technology. To understand why AI has become the topic of conversation from Shanghai to New York, let’s first dive into the capabilities of the most prominent AI Chatbots on the market. We’ll then explain why what many thought was the most significant and advanced Chatbot, ChatGTP, is being tested by a startup company across the globe.
Generative AI is best known as a model to help with everyday tasks employees used to stay overtime for. These tasks can include anything from summarizing a memo, creating an email draft, and even producing creative images based on specific prompts. Companies around the globe have employed AI on their platforms as a status symbol, to prove that their product is just as advanced as the next. Microsoft Edge, for example, appears on the Microsoft Office Platform as a suggester to the user, like an assistant awaiting their next command. Google Gemini appears whenever a user searches something into Google, providing a mostly accurate overview into the subject, and a basic answer to the question being asked. Both of these advancements, however, shadow in comparison to the most well known chatbot on the market: ChatGPT.
ChatGPT was first released at ChatGPT-1 by OpenAI on November 30, 2022 and gained 100 million users within days. The idea that a robot could respond to questions with complex reasoning was now no longer a thing of the future.
With OpenAI being the first to release such a product, the American company took surge of the marketplace with ease. Currently, OpenAI is valued at $29 billion, recently announced a longtime partnership with Microsoft, creating a multibillion dollar investment into advancing Artificial Intelligence on a global scale.
With the numerous advancements made by OpenAI over the years, most recently with their releasing of ChatGPT-4, many politicians, consumers, and corporate minds alike believed that the United States was eons ahead of other countries in terms of chatbot intelligence. Many also believed that this multi-million pour into extensive research and training to produce these reasoning models (founder Sam Altman claimed ChatGPT-4 costed just over $100 million to make) was the only way possible to create such a product.
This assumption was challenged last month when a research findings paper released by Chinese sources claimed that they created an advanced model just as capable as ChatGPT and other American models, but at a fraction of the cost. The DeepSeek Reasoning R-1 model is making large ripples in the AI industry and the global stock market alike, becoming the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store the month it was launched, and causing the tech-heavy American conglomerate NASDAQ to fall more than 3% at the end of January.
DeepSeek is also reported to have the capabilities to solve tasks ChatGPT was known for, including mathematics, coding, and even philosophical inquiries. However, this equal capability is only half of the story in terms of why it caused an American market freakout.
The DeepSeek R1 model was created by a Chinese startup, at around the same time that the popular social media application TikTok was pulled from US consumers due to security concerns. After an analysis of the new chatbot, it appears to collect as much user information as the condemned social media app if not more, as the company has access to all of the chat messages submitted and can access them within Chinese borders.
So, what does this mean for American businesses and consumers? For one, due to the prosecution recently done on Chinese companies for concerns over user data, the application Deep Seek may be off the market for American consumers in the near future. However, as it remains available to consumers, the application can be employed to aid with business endeavours with as much reliability as chatbots like ChatGPT-4. Generative AI models can help corporations with customer service, content creation such as drafting articles and generating images, and even writing code. Therefore, American employees may just have another product on their hands to aid their professional endeavours.
While the product did effect the US stock market within it’s opening days, both NASDAQ and Nvidia stocks have returned to previous numbers. Deep Seek is also still a private company, meaning that no American consumer is yet able to invest in the Chinese startup. Therefore, the effect DeepSeek has on stock so far is negligible. However, this doesn’t mean that the threat isn’t over.
While DeepSeek is being analyzed for both its accuracy in how much it costs to train the model as well as the models accuracy itself, the question of whether or not China has made an incredible advancement that surmounts American superiority is yet to be known. Perhaps further examination into the product will prove that the United States is not years ahead of other countries in their AI models like the world previously thought. While these questions and claims are being answered, the true effect that DeepSeek will have on both American consumers and businesses alike will not be known.