China's DeepSeek launches preview of new AI model

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek released a preview version of its new model, the V4, on Friday.

The long-awaited next-generation model "features an ultra-long context of one million words," the company said in a statement on social media.

The DeepSeek-V4 is available in a pro version and a cheaper flash version. V4-Pro has 1.6 trillion parameters while the V4-Flash has 284 billion parameters, which determine models' decision-making ability.

"In world knowledge benchmarks, DeepSeek-V4-Pro significantly leads other open-source models and is only slightly outperformed by the top-tier closed-source model, (Google's) Gemini-Pro-3.1," the company's statement added.

Releasing the preview versions allows the company to incorporate real-world feedback before finalizing the model.

US-China AI race

DeepSeek caused a stir in January last year when it unveiled a generative AI chatbot with capabilities that rivaled US products like ChatGPT but which it said had taken significantly less computing power and money to develop.

The company has also attracted controversy. For example, its chatbot has been found to dodge questions on politically sensitive topics such as the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, raising questions about censorship.

The Hangzhou-based startup has also been accused by the United States and its American competitors of improper and illegal conduct.

On ​Thursday, the White House alleged Chinese entities were engaging in "industrial-scale distillation campaigns to steal American AI."

Beijing rejected what it called "the baseless allegations," adding that China "attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights."

What DeepSeek's AI revolution means for you

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Edited by: Sean Sinico