DeepSeek has turned the AI world upside down this week with a new chatbot that’s shot to the top of global app stores – and rocked giants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The reason why DeepSeek is such big news is because it’s free, open source and appears to show it’s possible to create chatbots that can compete with models like ChatGPT’s o1 for a fraction of the cost.
It’s a story that continues to develop by the minute too, as rivals like OpenAI and Nvidia publicly comment on the emergence of China’s new AI disruptor, while the Australian government raises privacy concerns about DeepSeek.
Confused about DeepSeek and want the latest news on the biggest AI story of 2025 so far? We’re covering all of the latest news here live below…
The latest DeepSeek news
- OpenAI’s Sam Altman calls DeepSeek ‘impressive’ but promises to launch ‘much better models’ soon
- Don’t get too attached to DeepSeek – it’ll never survive in the US
- DeepSeek forced to pause new signups following large scale cyberattack
- DeepSeek has already dethroned ChatGPT – is it coming for Midjourney and DALL-E next?
A quick DeepSeek refresher
A bit confused about DeepSeek? Here’s a quick primer. The free AI chatbot was actually released on January 20, but has exploded in popularity over the past few days as tech fans realized its significance. As the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen noted on X (formerly Twitter), “Deepseek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment”.
The app is currently top of the free charts on Apple’s App Store and Play Store in the US and many other countries, despite being made in China – which was the subject of a trade ban on advanced chips from the likes of Nvidia.
Ironically, it’s those trade restrictions that appear to have sparked the ingenuity behind of DeepSeek, which was created using a tiny amount of the enormous compute power that’s behind today’s major AI models.
Benchmark tests show that it can perform tasks like answering questions and generating code as well as the current top AI models around. However, you may have trouble creating a DeepSeek account – it was forced to pause sign-ups following a major cyber-attack.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman responds
OpenAI’s Sam Altman has now publicly commented on DeepSeek for the first time, stating on X (formerly Twitter) that the AI model is “impressive” – and I can’t help but hear that in the voice of Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho business card scene.
But he was also typically bullish about OpenAI’s response, stating that “we will obviously deliver much better models” and that it’s “legit invigorating to have a new competitor”. Altman also doesn’t think the news changes the picture in terms of chips, stating that “more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission”.
The markets don’t seem to agree, with the chip-making giant Nvidia suffering the biggest one-day market value dive in US history yesterday.
Will the DeepSeek hype last?
TechRadar’s Editor-at-Large Lance Ulanoff has written a fine takedown of the DeepSeek hype – questioning whether the chatbot, which isn’t yet multi-modal, is worthy of the column inches it’s getting and (quite reasonably) suggesting that it’s unlikely to last in the US, given TikTok’s recent woes.
Commenting on the share price drops of Nvidia and others he notes “with almost no information or real proof that DeepSeek and its investors are being transparent and truthful, investors have started pulling their AI dollars from the US stock market.”
Even if we do accept that DeepSeek is a breakthrough, there are understandable question marks about its longevity in the US. As Lance Ulanoff states “it doesn’t matter how good it is; this app will not survive in the current US climate”.
Is DeepSeek safe to use?
We’ve done our own in-depth comparison of how DeepSeek compares to ChatGPT, but since then some privacy alarm bells have been sounded about the app.
As noted by the BBC, Australia’s science minister, Ed Husic, told ABC News earlier today there are lots of unanswered questions around “data and privacy management” with DeepSeek. “I would be very careful about that, these type of issues need to be weighed up carefully,” he cautioned.
DeepSeek’s privacy policy is quite open that “we store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China”. That information includes your email address, phone number, date of birth and chat histories.
None of this is much different from the privacy policies of ChatGPT or Gemini, but the harvesting of that information in China – and the fact that it’s combined with “actions you have taken outside the service” from advertisers – is bound to keep those alarm ring bells ringing louder in the coming days.
Who actually owns DeepSeek AI?
DeepSeek was founded in mid-2023 by the Chinese hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng, who is the company’s CEO. Liang founded High-Flyer, a hedge fund that uses AI to create trading strategies, back in 2015 – then according to a Washington Post profile, used that experience to develop large language models with his new DeepSeek company.
How close are DeepSeek’s links to the Chinese government? Inevitably, the AI app’s newfound success has garnered a lot of new attention, but it apparently hasn’t always been considered an AI star inside China.
According to Matt Sheehan (an expert on China’s AI industry quoted in the Washington Post’s profile), DeepSeek was “not the ‘chosen one’ of Chinese AI start-ups” and that it “took the world by surprise, and I think to a large extent, they took the Chinese government by surprise”.
But DeepSeek is now far from an unknown – and it’ll be interesting to see if or how it distances itself from the Chinese government in order to allay those growing privacy fears.
Nvidia calls DeepSeek an ‘excellent AI advancement’
Beyond OpenAI’s Sam Altman sharing his thoughts about DeepSeek AI and promising much more from ChatGPT, Nvidia has also publicly commented, calling DeepSeek an “excellent AI advancement.”
The response came after yesterday’s record-breaking $600 billion share price drop, the largest drop the shares have ever seen and largely a result of DeepSeek’s performance and the cost of the AI model. Beyond being impressed by R1, it’s clear that Nvidia wants to remain a key part of the narrative.
The complete written statement reads, “DeepSeek is an excellent AI advancement and a perfect example of Test Time Scaling. DeepSeek’s work illustrates how new models can be created using that technique, leveraging widely-available models and compute that is fully export control compliant. Inference requires significant numbers of NVIDIA GPUs and high-performance networking. We now have three scaling laws: pre-training and post-training, which continue, and new test-time scaling.”
President Trump says DeepSeek AI should be a ‘wake-up call’ for US AI companies
President Trump, only two weeks into his second term, has commented on DeepSeek, saying, “The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win because we have the greatest scientists in the world,” according to The Washington Post.
He described the launch of DeepSeek AI as a “wake-up call,” adding that competitors in the United States – potentially OpenAI, Nvidia, and Google – must be “laser-focused on winning.” Trump’s comments were also likely a reflection of the DeepSeek news’ impact on the US stock market. Most tech stocks slid, but AI GPU leader Nvidia had its worst day on record.
It’s an unsurprising comment, but the follow-up statement was a bit more confusing as President Trump reportedly stated that DeepSeek’s breakthrough in more efficient AI “could be a positive because the tech is now also available to U.S. companies” – that’s not exactly the case, though, as the AI newcomer isn’t sharing those details just yet and is a Chinese owned company.
DeepSeek doesn’t pass Navy muster
The United States Navy has issued a new warning to sailors, warning against DeepSeek AI due to ‘security and ethical concerns,’ according to CNBC. It seems that the alert was issued by the U.S. Navy on Friday, January 24, 2025, which is a few days before the app ultimately paused new sign-ups and experienced an outage on Monday, January 27, 2025.
As reported by CNBC, the U.S. Navy warning reads, “We would like to bring to your attention a critical update regarding a new AI model called DeepSeek,” the email said. The memo said it’s “imperative” that team members do not use DeepSeek’s AI “for any work-related tasks or personal use.”
The U.S. Navy confirmed the notice’s authenticity and referred to its generative AI policy. The warning essentially amounts to a ban against DeepSeek AI and its various models, instructing the recipients to “refrain from downloading, installing, or using the DeepSeek model in any capacity.”
Seemingly, the U.S. Navy must have had its reasoning beyond the outage and reported malicious attacks that hit DeepSeek AI three days later.
