Key takeaways
- DeepSeek R1 is cost-efficient, while ChatGPT-4o offers more versatility.
- DeepSeek excels at mathematical problem-solving; ChatGPT-4o is better at general reasoning.
- DeepSeek is cheaper to train, making AI more accessible.
- Both DeepSeek and ChatGPT face privacy and ethical concerns.
The way in which AI has been developing over the past few years is quite different from the early 2000s movie version — even though I, Robot was a fantastic film and probably deserves a rewatch.
Still, while we don’t have humanoid robots voicing their thoughts, the thoughts themselves — now expressed through mainstream LLMs (large language models) — are incredibly advanced and strikingly human.
To some extent, 2017 should be thanked for this, with the introduction of transformer-based models that made AI far more capable of processing language naturally. Over the years, models like OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) have set new benchmarks, improving with each iteration.
AI tools are now deeply integrated into industries. In healthcare, AI assists doctors by analyzing medical records and imaging data, helping identify diseases faster and more accurately. In finance, AI plays a critical role in fraud detection and risk assessment, scanning vast amounts of transaction data to flag suspicious activity. Customer service has also been transformed by AI-powered chatbots, which handle inquiries instantly, improving response times and reducing operational costs.
Beyond these sectors, AI is reshaping manufacturing by optimizing supply chains and predicting when machines will need maintenance, cutting downtime and increasing efficiency. In education, AI-driven learning platforms adapt to individual students, offering personalized lessons that improve retention and engagement.
The diverse applications of AI across various industries contributed to the significant market impact experienced in early 2025 with the release of DeepSeek’s R1 model. This open-source reasoning AI model, developed with remarkable resource efficiency, has been described as “upending AI” and initiating “a new era of AI brinkmanship.”
Indeed, China has demonstrated that high-level AI performance is possible at a fraction of the cost, making advanced AI more practical for wider adoption. Now, the entire industry is on a crash course to shift its focus toward making existing models more efficient and accessible.
This article compares DeepSeek’s R1 with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Is this just classic Shanzhai, or is it a positive sign of a developing competitive spirit within the AI sector?
DeepSeek explained
DeepSeek, officially known as Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., is a Chinese artificial intelligence company founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng. Like OpenAI, DeepSeek specializes in developing open-source LLMs to advance artificial general intelligence (AGI) and make it widely accessible.
DeepSeek has introduced a range of innovative technologies that have positioned it as a formidable competitor in the AI landscape:
- DeepSeek-R1: Launched in early 2025, this flagship model has gained attention for its advanced capabilities and cost-efficient design. Despite a significantly lower training cost of about $6 million, DeepSeek-R1 delivers performance comparable to leading models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1.
- Efficient computing with a mixture of experts: DeepSeek-R1 utilizes a mixture of experts (MoE) technique. Unlike traditional deep learning models, which activate all parameters regardless of the complexity of a given task, MoE dynamically selects a subset of specialized neural network components — known as experts — to process each input.
- Advanced reasoning in mathematics and coding: The model excels in complex reasoning tasks, particularly in mathematical problem-solving and programming. By employing chain-of-thought reasoning, DeepSeek-R1 demonstrates its logical process, which can also be leveraged to train smaller AI models.
- Open-source accessibility: DeepSeek has embraced an open-source model, allowing developers and organizations to freely use, modify and build upon its AI models.
DeepSeek’s rise is reshaping the AI industry, challenging the dominance of major tech firms and proving that groundbreaking AI development is not limited to companies with vast financial resources.
Did you know? The launch of DeepSeek-R1 triggered a 17% drop in Nvidia’s stock price, wiping out $589 billion in market value — the largest single-day loss in US stock market history.
ChatGPT explained
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot launched in 2022. It is built upon OpenAI's GPT-4o LLM, enabling it to generate humanlike conversational responses. This capability allows users to guide conversations toward desired lengths, formats, styles, levels of detail and languages.
ChatGPT offers a range of functionalities that have broadened its applicability across various sectors:
- Natural language understanding and generation: It can comprehend and produce text that closely mirrors human conversation, facilitating seamless interactions.
- Multimodal integration: Beyond text, ChatGPT has been enhanced to process and generate content across multiple modalities, including text, voice and images. This integration allows for more dynamic and versatile user interactions.
- Advanced data analysis: The advanced data analysis feature enables users to upload various data types, such as text documents, for tasks like summarization and information extraction.
- Plugin support: ChatGPT supports plugins, including web browsing and code interpretation, and external plugins from developers such as Expedia, OpenTable, Zapier, Shopify, Slack and Wolfram.
The development and training of ChatGPT involved significant financial investment. Estimates suggest that training GPT-4, the model underlying ChatGPT, cost between $41 million and $78 million.
Did you know? By January 2025, ChatGPT’s website attracted 3.8 billion visits over 30 days, with users spending an average of six minutes per session.
DeepSeek vs ChatGPT: AI performance analysis
When comparing DeepSeek R1 and OpenAI's ChatGPT, several key performance factors define their effectiveness.
1. Accuracy and reliability
DeepSeek R1 demonstrates exceptional accuracy in structured reasoning tasks, particularly in mathematics and coding. According to benchmark tests, DeepSeek R1 achieves 90% accuracy in mathematical problem-solving, surpassing ChatGPT-4o’s 83% accuracy in advanced STEM-related benchmarks. In coding tasks, DeepSeek R1 boasts a 97% success rate in logic puzzles, making it highly effective for debugging and programming-related applications.
ChatGPT-4o, on the other hand, excels in multi-step reasoning and general knowledge inquiries. It ranks in the 89th percentile on Codeforces, a platform used for competitive programming, making it a strong choice for developers. Additionally, ChatGPT-4o provides superior multi-step explanations in various domains, including physics and linguistics, where complex problem breakdowns are required.
2. Efficiency and resource utilization
One of DeepSeek R1’s major advantages is its MoE architecture, which enables efficient computation. Although DeepSeek R1 has 671 billion parameters, it only activates 37 billion per query, significantly reducing computational load. This results in faster response times and lower energy consumption than ChatGPT-4o’s dense model architecture, which relies on 1.8 trillion parameters in a monolithic structure.
Training efficiency is another key distinction. DeepSeek R1 was trained in 55 days on 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs at an estimated cost of $5.5 million, less than one-tenth of ChatGPT-4o’s estimated $100 million+ training cost. This makes DeepSeek more accessible for companies looking to integrate AI solutions without heavy infrastructure investments.
3. Scalability and adaptability
ChatGPT-4o offers broader adaptability due to its 200K token context window, which is significantly larger than DeepSeek R1’s 128K token limit. This allows ChatGPT to process and retain more extensive conversations, making it better suited for customer service, research applications and document analysis.
ChatGPT-4o also supports multimodal capabilities, allowing users to work with text, voice and images. DeepSeek R1, however, remains text-only, limiting its versatility in image and speech-based AI applications.
DeepSeek vs ChatGPT: Feature comparison
Let’s condense this overview into a feature comparison:
Data privacy and security concerns
Both platforms have usage risks related to data privacy and security, although DeepSeek is somewhat ahead in the firing line.
Indeed, DeepSeek has raised significant data privacy issues due to its practice of collecting and storing user data on servers located in China. This approach has also led to national security concerns, particularly in the United States, where experts warn that user information could be accessed by the Chinese government. The situation mirrors previous apprehensions regarding apps like TikTok.
DeepSeek’s privacy policy also indicates that it collects extensive user data, including text or audio inputs, uploaded files and chat histories. This broad data collection has prompted warnings from officials advising against uploading sensitive information to the platform.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, also collects user data, including personal information and usage details, but has implemented measures to protect this data.
Concerns remain, however. For instance, between June 2022 and May 2023, about 100,000 ChatGPT account credentials were compromised and sold on the dark web, highlighting vulnerabilities in data security.
Ethical considerations and compliance with regulations
Ethical concerns regarding AI language models include bias, misinformation and censorship. DeepSeek has been observed to censor discussions on topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government, such as the Tiananmen Square protests and human rights in China.
This isn’t a unique issue with DeepSeek, however. ChatGPT has faced criticism for generating biased or discriminatory content and for occasionally producing harmful or misleading information.
These issues stem from biases present in the training data and highlight the challenges in ensuring ethical AI outputs. OpenAI has acknowledged these concerns and is working on strategies to mitigate them, but challenges persist.
Choosing between DeepSeek and ChatGPT
DeepSeek is far from being AI Shanzai and has demonstrated that AI models can be highly efficient, cost-effective and competitive without requiring the vast financial and computational resources of industry giants like OpenAI and Google.
However, ChatGPT still has an edge in some departments. Here is a quick summary of how to choose between the two.
When to choose DeepSeek R1
- Cost-effective AI solutions: Companies looking for high-performance AI at a lower operational cost.
- Technical and STEM-focused tasks: Ideal for complex coding, debugging and step-by-step logical problem-solving.
- Customization needs: Organizations requiring open-source AI models for specialized applications.
When to choose ChatGPT-4o
- Multimodal functionality: Best suited for tasks involving text, voice and image analysis.
- Customer support and general applications: Works well for chatbots, document processing and large-scale customer interactions.
- Longer context windows: Better for extended conversations and memory-intensive applications.
Finally, this new competitive spirit within the AI industry is a fantastic development. It’s likely that along with greater innovation, lower costs and increased accessibility, monopolies may be prevented from controlling advancements and pricing.
Who knows, perhaps talking robots aren’t out of the question.
Written by Bradley Peak