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 startup 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 country into a tech superpower has long been President Xi Jinping's goal and China has its sights on becoming the world leader in AI by 2030.

China views AI as being "strategically crucial" and its foray into the field has actually been "years in the making", said Chen Qiheng, an associated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

Private and public financial investments in Chinese AI accelerated after ChatGPT removed in 2022 and revealed guarantees of real-world company applications, Chen informed CNA.

But it was DeepSeek's rise that actually "encouraged" the concept that smaller gamers like start-up companies could have roles to play in AI research study and developments, he includes.

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The "emphasis on expense advantage" is a distinguishing characteristic of Chinese AI, Chen says, with lower training and inference expenses - the costs of using a trained model to draw conclusions from new data.

2025 could also see the introduction of more Chinese AI designs taking on sophisticated reasoning jobs.

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

AGI refers to a system with intelligence on par with human capabilities.

Chinese AI companies are moving rapidly, experts state, building on DeepSeek's momentum to come up with their own ingenious and economical methods to use generative AI to jobs and establish more innovative items beyond chatbots.

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