DeepSeek AI has become extremely popular among users in recent days. The situation is similar now to November 2022, when ChatGPT conquered the tech world. Can DeepSeek compete with OpenAI’s o1 model? Or even beat it? This is what we will examine in this article.
ChatGPT has not really had a competitor so far, but it may have found a worthy challenger in DeepSeek.
Developing AI tools costs a lot of money, which is why emerging startups usually seek support from big tech companies. DeepSeek emerged almost from nothing.
DeepSeek’s R1 model officially advertises itself as a competitor to o1. Many claim that the Chinese chatbot can be a worthy challenger to OpenAI’s most popular model.
An interesting fact is that training the model cost much less ($5.6 million instead of $100 million) and using the API is also significantly cheaper.
According to the MIT technology review:
“the sanctions appear to be driving startups like DeepSeek to innovate in ways that prioritize efficiency, resource-pooling, and collaboration.”
This is a very interesting statement, because if efficiency increases and a system can be trained faster and cheaper, then it can be assumed that its energy consumption will also be lower.
Even the stock market felt the advance of DeepSeek: Nvidia’s share price fell significantly.
Registration
Registration is very simple: you can even log in with a Google account and the service is currently completely free.
Although unfortunately, at the time of writing, logging in is quite difficult. According to the company, the system is currently under attack by a large-scale hacker.
Update: It has since been revealed that DeepSeek mobile applications have already been banned in Italy due to data protection issues, and the France’s privacy watchdog has launched an investigation into it, so there is a lot of interest in the new chatbot in all respects.
Let’s see what it can do
Test #1 – Open Question
After logging in, I started with a simple open question:
I then asked what is the situation now, in 2025?
It also gave a detailed answer to this and briefly outlined possible future developments in the field of AI image generators (e.g. DALL-E 4, further Stable Diffusion versions, and so on)
Test #2 – Searching Website Content
I then followed up with a question that required a bit more analysis:
“What is the latest post in the AI Timeline on aiartblog.com?”
To which it replied that it had no access to the internet:
When using DeepSeek’s Search feature, I received this message:
“Sorry, DeepSeek search service is busy. Please disable search or try again later.”
ChatGPT gave me the correct answer:
Test #3 – Pythagorean theorem
The next test was a medium difficulty math problem: explaining the Pythagorean theorem. I was curious to see how it would display the formulas and if it would draw a diagram.
Here’s how DeepSeek AI solved it (excerpt from the answer):
ChatGPT asks if we want visual proof, and then asks if it should generate an image for it.
The explanation is detailed, but the image is unfortunately not very useful:
Test #4 – Creating a 3D model from an AI image
In the following, I was curious how it would answer this question:
“How can I create a 3D model from an AI generated image?”
It also gave a detailed answer here, but only indicated the references in the text after being asked:
Test #5 – Image Generation
Finally, I asked it to draw a picture using a previous ChatGPT prompt I wrote for an article about DALL-E 3 going free.
The prompt:
“Imagine an oil painting of Yggdrasil, the immense and mystical ash tree that connects the Nine Worlds in Norse mythology. The tree stands tall and grand, its sprawling branches reaching up to the heavens, filled with lush green leaves that shimmer with an otherworldly glow. The trunk is thick and gnarled, with intricate patterns etched into the bark, symbolizing the ancient runes of wisdom.
At the base of Yggdrasil, the roots dig deep into the earth, entwining around sacred wells like the Well of Urd. The roots are surrounded by mist, hinting at the connection to the underworld. The scene captures the tree as the cosmic axis, with the sky above painted in deep blues and purples, speckled with stars, and the ground below showing hints of the realms connected by the roots.
A serpent can be seen coiling around one of the roots, representing Nidhogg gnawing at the base of the tree, while an eagle perches high in the branches, its sharp eyes gazing out over the worlds. Other creatures from Norse myth, like the stags that graze on Yggdrasil’s leaves, are subtly included in the composition, adding layers of depth and storytelling.
The painting exudes a sense of ancient power, mystery, and the interconnectedness of all things in the Norse cosmos, with vibrant colors and rich textures that convey the majesty and sacredness of Yggdrasil.”
And the result:
So DeepSeek can’t generate an image directly in the chat window. But they released the Janus-Pro-7B image generator which is downloadable from GitHub or you can try it out on Huggingface.
It is maybe not the challenger of Dall-E, but it will be better shortly I think.
I generated this test images on Huggingface. Click on the thumb block to see the full sized images on Facebook.
It’s clear that the image quality is still lagging behind its big rivals. The model still has a lot to learn here.
My summary
DeepSeek is a promising chatbot that could be a worthy challenger to ChatGPT. It is said to heavily censor results on certain topics (such as Chinese historical and political events). Fortunately, this does not affect us in terms of AI art.
Based on my tests, I consider o1 to be an even better model, but it is a fact that DeepSeek is also noteworthy.
Unfortunately, DeepSeek’s servers are very busy, so its use can be difficult during peak hours.
The news about data protection that has been appearing in recent days is thought-provoking, and it is worth reading them.
Considering that training R1 took much less energy and this chatbot is quite easy to use, it is worth trying out what it is capable of.
Advice: I would not give it confidential data considering the ongoing data protection investigations and previous news about how Chatbots use the data provided to them.
Cover image based on:
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay