Is the World Ready for Chinese AI?

China’s DeepSeek has released two new models in the last month that, by all accounts, are competitive with the leading models from US AI developers. Curious about global sentiment, I asked members of the global INSEAD AI Community whether they would consider using a Chinese AI model.

As someone based in the US, the results were somewhat surprising. A significant number of people saw no issues with using Chinese AI, despite the fact that the online versions are monitored in real time in China and results are filtered to align with Chinese law — meaning nothing disparaging about China will appear in the outputs. Yet, many respondents were still ready to adopt these models.

DeepSeek’s models differ from OpenAI’s offerings in that they are open-source and freely modifiable by users. Additionally, the cost of using these models is up to 30X lower. For many parts of the world operating under tight AI budgets, the promise of high performance at a fraction of the cost is undeniably compelling.

What does this mean for the global AI race? It’s too early to say, but one thing is clear — developments are moving so fast that predicting the outcome is anyone’s guess. The key question now is: how will US AI developers respond?

Stay tuned.

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