DeepSeek is a Chinese A.I. powered chat bot similar to ChatGPT. Its first version was released in November 2023, but the latest version which came out on January 20th (DeepSeek-R1), caused the application to skyrocket from obscurity to number one in the Apple Store.

To the surprise of many, DeepSeek was able to accomplish such a feat despite its lowered production costs compared to ChatGPT and other large A.I. focused companies.

According to its founders, the budget to develop DeepSeek's latest model was a modest $5.576 million.

This success has led some to question the amount of funds American based big tech has spent on A.I. projects.

For example, Microsoft and Meta have pledged $80 billion and $65 billion on A.I. respectively in the current fiscal year.

Yet despite its evident success, the publicity surrounding DeepSeek has not been purely positive.

DeepSeek and Censorship

Many users of DeepSeek have reported the chat bot seems to censor itself in regards to topics of China or its government.

If you ask the A.I. assistant information about the United Kingdom's 2021 partygate scandals or America's 2020 presidential debate, it will generate responses similar to ChatGPT or Gemini.

Yet, if users ask DeepSeek about the Umbrella Revolution, other China-related controversies or surface-level information like who the country's president is, it will respond with,

"Sorry, that's beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else."

Various researchers have attributed this to the Chinese Communist Party's strict guidelines over accessible media and information. This being, information that doesn't go against the country's "core socialist values,'' according to a technical document released by China's national cyber security standards committee.

When questioned on this manner, spokesman Liu Pengyu for the Chinese Embassy stated:

"Artificial intelligence is not outside the law, and all governments are managing it according to law, and China is no exception. China administers, operates and accessing the Internet in accordance with the law, so as to ensure the healthy operation of the Internet on the track of rule of law".

Some users of DeepSeek have found ways to work around China's censorship.

Per The New York Times, some users got around the censorship by "asking DeepSeek to replace certain letters with others, for example, using the number 3 to replace the letter E when describing the Tiananmen Square massacre.''

Other users attempted to jailbreak the application.

Either way, DeepSeek has been the talk of the internet. The chat bot has been highly praised by many for its efficiency and lower production costs.

For others, the application's lack of unrestrained speech overshadows any cost-efficient features it may have.