DeepSeek has develop into one of many world’s finest recognized chatbots and far of that is because of it being developed in China – a rustic that wasn’t, till now, thought of to be on the forefront of AI know-how.
Having produced a mannequin that’s on a par, when it comes to efficiency, with OpenAI’s acclaimed o1 mannequin, it rapidly caught the creativeness of customers who helped it to shoot to the highest of the iOS App Retailer chart.
However whereas it’s greater than able to answering questions and producing code, with OpenAI’s Sam Altman going so far as calling the AI mannequin “spectacular”, AI’s obvious ‘Sputnik second’ isn’t with out controversy and doubt.
This text was right as of February 2025. AI instruments are up to date often and it’s attainable that some options have modified since this text was written. Some options can also solely be accessible in sure nations.
What’s DeepSeek?
When it was unveiled in January 2025, DeepSeek took the tech business unexpectedly. First, its new reasoning mannequin known as DeepSeek R1 was broadly thought of to be a match for ChatGPT. Second, with the US having positioned restrictions on China receiving the highest-performance chips, the mannequin was mentioned to be working on older chipsets – prompting questions over whether or not AI actually wanted probably the most leading edge tech.
As such, a file $593 billion was wiped off the market worth of chip big Nvidia in a single day and ripples quickly unfold. DeepSeek’s declare to have spent simply $6m/£4.8m/AU$9.4m coaching its chatbot – far lower than that of ChatGPT – definitely startled tech firms in Silicon Valley and it additionally confirmed that the US wasn’t essentially the one nation on the forefront of the AI revolution.
Since then, nonetheless, many governments worldwide have been expressing safety and privateness considerations. Worryingly, analysis performed by Enkrypt AI discovered DeepSeek is 11 times more dangerous than other AI chatbots. However there’s nonetheless no getting round the truth that DeepSeek was a breakthrough.

What can you employ DeepSeek for?
DeepSeek can be utilized for all kinds of duties from asking questions on an enormous vary of subjects to looking for info on-line and inside giant datasets – as with different chatbots, it has been skilled on giant quantities of real-world and artificial knowledge.
It’s additionally able to producing textual content from prompts so you may get it to put in writing paperwork, emails, tales, scripts, poems and extra. And, simply as with ChatGPT, you can too get it to provide, debug and optimize code, breaking down programming obstacles and rushing up improvement time. Because of reasoning capabilities, DeepSeek can assume earlier than it solutions to inferences and draw conclusions as properly.
What can’t you employ DeepSeek for?
You possibly can’t use DeepSeek to ask questions on delicate political subjects associated to China. Notorious examples are questions that contain references to the Tiananmen Sq. protests and bloodbath – they occurred in 1989, led to deaths ranging in quantity from a number of hundred to a number of thousand, and are well-documented outdoors of China, however DeepSeek simply received’t talk about it. It’ll are likely to inform you that it’s past its present scope and ask you to speak about one thing else.
How a lot does DeepSeek price?
Deepseek is open supply and you may entry the DeepSeek-V3 mannequin free of charge which is maybe one of many the explanation why it’s had such a speedy rise, as a result of it’s successfully opening highly effective AI to all. Cash is one factor, however what about the price when it comes to privateness and safety? DeepSeek’s privacy policy says “we retailer the data we acquire in safe servers situated within the Individuals’s Republic of China”. It’s storing your e-mail tackle, telephone quantity, date of delivery and chat histories.
The place can you employ DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is accessible to make use of through a browser however there are additionally native apps for iOS and Android which you should use to entry the chatbot.

Is DeepSeek any good?
DeepSeek is a really highly effective chatbot – if it was poor, the US markets wouldn’t have been thrown into turmoil over it. The truth is, after we examined it towards Gemini 2.0 Flash, DeepSeek was the winner. However questions on this AI transcend the precise technical nature of it. You simply can’t draw back from the privateness and safety considerations being raised, given DeepSeek’s deep-seated connection to China.
Neither are you able to ignore claims from OpenAI that DeepSeek was skilled on its mannequin which, once more, exhibits there’s quite a bit we have to learn about DeepSeek. TechRadar’s editor-at-large Lance Ulanoff is definitely cautious. “There isn’t a cause to belief DeepSeek and its backers’ claims,” he mentioned. “I believe the reality in regards to the time and monetary funding it took them to get right here will come out.”
Use DeepSeek if…
You need a free, highly effective chatbot that has nice reasoning powers and also you’re not bothered that it doesn’t have instruments supplied by ChatGPT reminiscent of Canvas or that it may possibly’t work together with custom-made GPTs. You must also use DeepSeek if you need an easier expertise as a result of it may possibly really feel a bit extra streamlined when in comparison with the ChatGPT expertise.
Don’t use DeepSeek if…
You need to generate pictures, as a result of DeepSeek is solely text-based. For that, you’re higher off utilizing ChatGPT which has an excellent picture generator in DALL-E. You must also keep away from DeepSeek if you need an AI with multimodal capabilities (you’ll be able to’t add a picture and begin asking questions on it). And, as soon as once more, with out wishing to bang the identical drum, don’t use DeepSeek in the event you’re frightened about privateness and safety.
Additionally take into account
The very best various to DeepSeek is clearly ChatGPT – the pair, by and enormous, do a lot the identical factor however the latter goes additional with the likes of picture era and its safety and privateness insurance policies really feel extra reassuring. You may additionally need to take into account Google Gemini. We pitted Gemini 2.0 Flash against DeepSeek R1 so it’s price seeing how they fared.
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