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 game after DeepSeek's success.

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max chatbot, Chinese start-up 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 "strategically crucial" and its foray into the field has been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an associated researcher 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 promises of real-world business applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's rise that actually "encouraged" the idea that smaller sized players like start-up firms might have functions to play in AI research and developments, he includes.

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The "emphasis on expense advantage" is an unique feature of Chinese AI, Chen states, with lower training and reasoning expenses - the costs of utilizing a trained model to draw conclusions from brand-new data.

2025 might also see the development of more Chinese AI designs dealing with innovative reasoning jobs.

"We could see some AI companies concentrating on getting closer to artificial basic intelligence (AGI) while others focus on concrete ways to commercialise their designs and incorporate them with clinical research," Chen added.

AGI describes a system with intelligence on par with human capabilities.

Chinese AI business are moving rapidly, experts state, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical ways to apply generative AI to jobs and establish advanced products beyond chatbots.

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