‘Made in China’: Pride, pleasant surprise from Chinese netizens as DeepSeek jolts global AI scene

SEEKING DEEPER USES FOR DEEPSEEK

Chinese netizens have also taken to social media to share their experiences using DeepSeek.

One user on Xiaohongshu described it as sounding human and not “machine-like”.

Another user described her emotional experience when using DeepSeek to brainstorm a story.

In a post that garnered 19,000 likes, the user, Cat and Mouse, shared how she had come up with a story based on her grandmother, but struggled to pen it down due to her limited writing skills. She then asked DeepSeek to do so by feeding it the data.

“I was blown away by the story it wrote, not so much by how well it was written, but by the fact that even a story like that would have taken me a long, long time to write (and not nearly as well as it did), and it only took (DeepSeek) 5 seconds,” the user wrote.

Another user, Bella Ren, described being “extremely surprised” by the quality of the copy provided by DeepSeek, contrasting it with her previous attempts using ChatGPT.

She noted that while the latter offered “precise accuracy” in handling entrepreneurial insights, its output often had a “distinctly human-machine flavour”.

“I can’t help but admire DeepSeek’s proficiency in writing copy,” said Bella Ren, adding that she intends to turn to DeepSeek as her go-to AI tool.

Some user feedback has been more tempered.

A Weibo user underscored DeepSeek’s limitations in handling complex creative tasks that require an understanding of context, nuance, and human emotions. This is a challenge faced by other AI models as well.

“Using DeepSeek to write novels presents significant challenges. It still struggles to imagine human behavioural patterns, resulting in clichéd outlines,” the user wrote.

Even so, observers note that DeepSeek’s competitive edge isn’t borne out of such uses as writing novels.

“It’s the developers who are using the underlying technology to develop other applications based on this model – from education, commerce, everything you can develop,” said Chen, the Beijing-based independent consultant.

“I think the most competitive edge DeepSeek has against other AI platforms is that it’s relatively cheaper to use. It uses fewer chips to produce its model than other big companies.”