The arrival of the Chinese AI app DeepSeek has shaken financial markets prompting US President Donald Trump to call it a wake up call for the US tech industry. DeepSeek's claim that its R1 artificial intelligence (AI) model was developed at a fraction of the cost of its rivals has raised questions about the future of the entire industry and led to a significant decline in the value of some of the world's largest companies.
Just a week after its launch. DeepSeek has become the most downloaded free app in the US. So how does it compare to its more established and seemingly more expensive US rivals such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini?
When you ask ChatGPT about the most popular reasons for using it, one of the top answers is that it helps people with writing. From gathering and summarizing information in a useful format to even drafting blog posts on a topic, ChatGPT has become an AI companion for many across different workplaces. As a passionate Scottish football fan, I asked both ChatGPT and DeepSeek to summarize the greatest Scottish football players in history. Then. I requested the chatbots to draft a blog post summarizing the best Scottish football players of all time.
DeepSeek responded within seconds with a top ten list. Liverpool and Celtic legend Kenny Dalglish ranked number one. It also helpfully summarized each player's position the clubs they played for and a brief list of their achievements.
DeepSeek also mentioned two non Scottish players Rangers legend. Brian Laudrup who is Danish and Celtic hero Henrik Larsson. Regarding Larsson it added. Although Swedish Larsson is often included in discussions of Scottish football legends due to his significant impact at Celtic. In its subsequent blog post it went into detail about Laudrup's nationality before providing a concise account of the players' careers. ChatGPT's response included many of the same names with King Kenny once again at the top of the list. Its detailed blog post gave a brief and accurate overview of all the players careers.
It concluded. While the game has changed over the decades the impact of these Scottish greats remains timeless. Indeed. For this fun test DeepSeek was certainly comparable to its best known US competitor.
The emergence of advanced AI models has made a difference to those who code. When ChatGPT experienced an outage last week many amusing posts appeared on X from developers saying they couldn't do their work without their faithful tool by their side. So how does DeepSeek compare here?
Javier Aguirre an AI researcher at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul South Korea who specializes in medicine and AI wrote in a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday. I am quite impressed with DeepSeek. When coding we usually try to push AI chatbots to the limit to see their capabilities in assisting with coding.
Today I had a very tricky and complex problem. Even ChatGPT o1 was not able to reason enough to solve it. I gave DeepSeek a try and it solved it instantly and straight to the point. He also pointed out that for coders combining models can lead to success. This was echoed by Addy Osmani. Head of Chrome Developer Experience at Google. In a post to his 208k followers on LinkedIn he spoke about combining DeepSeek with US AI firm Anthropic's tool. Claude Sonnet. In 2023. Amazon invested $4 billion in Anthropic.
Mr. Osmani said. Code with AI? DeepSeek R1 + Claude Sonnet may be the best new hybrid coding model. Yes engineers are using them together. He also mentioned that DeepSeek is significantly cheaper to use than both Claude Sonnet and OpenAI's o1 model.
What about brainstorming? I asked both ChatGPT and DeepSeek to give me ideas for a story for children about a boy who lives on the moon. ChatGPT responded in seconds with six neatly summarized ideas. One was about a boy named Max who worked as a postman on the moon and was sent on an adventure. Another was about Oliver who was drawn to the sounds of a mysterious orchestra made up of aliens. None of these stories are going to challenge Harry Potter or Roald Dahl anytime soon but they could be a starting point for more refined ideas to emerge.
On the other hand DeepSeek provided just one idea. Luna and the Boy Who Chased the Stars. Its response was 387 words (with no mention of anyone or anything named Luna) and it told the story of a curious boy named Milo who lived on the moon. It struck me that while ChatGPT provided ideas DeepSeek wrote a complete story. It wasn't particularly good as it focused on a simple character going from A to B but it was a start and it was impressive how quickly it delivered.
One of my memories from high school is my history teacher explaining to us how the First World War came about which was a very complex situation involving many. European powers and how it ultimately started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. So how do the chatbots explain such a complex and nuanced piece of history? Quite well.
ChatGPT provided a detailed account and outlined the key factors. DeepSeek's account was not as detailed but its brief overview did cover all the main points and events. Google's Gemini assistant also gave a similar summary to ChatGPT and DeepSeek and allowed the user the opportunity to click on links from reputable sources such as the Imperial War Museum in the UK. As I saw with other tasks and prompts DeepSeek was certainly comparable to its US competitors.
The tasks I set for the chatbots were simple but they point to something much bigger the winner of the so called AI race is far from decided. While US companies have poured vast resources into this technology their Chinese competitor has shown that their successes can be emulated. Professor Neil Lawrence DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the .
Department of Computer Science and Technology University of Cambridge said this is just the beginning. I think it's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the type of innovation we can expect in these models he said. He provided an example from history. James Watt is associated with the steam engine even though he didn’t invent it but improved upon it. There is plenty of space for budding James Watts to emerge and they are less likely to come from established players he said.
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