Thanks to the costs of realization and extremely low use, Deepseek has conquered the IA market. But plagiarism accusations have already arrived.
Founded in Hangzhou, in one of the most active financial centers of the People’s Republic of China, Deepsek (Literally: “Looking for deep”) It is the start-up that is making us talk about itself all over the world. Created in 2023 by the young Liang Wenfeng and financed by the High-Flyer speculative fund, it is-in poor words- Chinese chatgptwith similar performance.
Even too much: Open Source architecture (as the Openii model is no longer) and Extremely low construction and use costs and use. There is, however, the Engineer: after the download boom of the last few weeks and the consequent collapse of the US technological titles, Openii and Microsoft on the stock exchange in the Accused Deepseek of having plagiarize chatgpt in open violation of the concessions of use of the software. The Chinese app therefore suddenly disappeared from the digital stores. We try to understand, in detail, as it went.
From debut to success. The Deepseek success has come very quickly with the launch of his Free App In the autumn of 2024. In a few months, the chatbot climbed the global download charts, reaching first place on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. The combination between effectiveness, ease of use And accessibilitybut above all its almost null cost (only for the advanced API functions – Application Programming Interface – a cost of $ 10 per year is required against the 270 of the most visible competitor) has conquered users of all kinds, from the generic public to developers.
There transparency of the code He also attracted the interest of the Tech Community, which began to contribute to the improvement of the model. The platform supports two languages, English and Chinese, and stands out for the ability to solve complex problems and to write textshowever, avoiding politically sensitive issues.
The censorship knot. Own Political censorship He caused the first important crack in the “perfect” world of Deepseek. In fact, the Balenottera app (a symbol chosen to represent the depth and vastness of knowledge) Avoid politically delicate topicslike the massacre in Piazza Tiananmen, a theme that has triggered a heated debate especially in the western world.
Users who have tried to dialogue sensitive topics with the chatbot are not counted by then describing their experience on social media and easily demonstrating that The IA had been educated to divert the speechif not convenient. And although many analysts believe that this self -censorship represents an intrinsic limitation of the Chinese model, others have emphasized that it is precisely this compromise that makes the app of success also in the local market: free but with some restrictions.
The effects on the market. With the growth of Deepseek, The effects on the market They did not wait. In January 2025, The actions of leading companies in the sector Like Nvidia (by the way, not being able to access the very powerful chips of the American house, the Chinese IA works thanks to those designed by Huawei) and Softbank suffered bruschi calmreflecting the concerns of investors for Asian competition.
The Open Source approach The start-up has questioned the consolidated business models, increasing the pressure on companies such as Openii and Microsoft, which rely on closed and heavy investments in cloud infrastructures. Investments that have reached more than 100 million dollars to develop the latest version of Chatgpt (a hugeness compared to the Deepseek operation, started with an initial “suns” budget 5.6 million dollars).
The accusations of plagiarism. The tensions between China and the United States then intensified on January 29, when Openai and Microsoft accused Deepseek of using their GPT model as a base to develop the chatbot. According to the two giants, he would have exploited a dataset derived from a western system, In violating patents and international standards, but the Chinese company denied the accusations of data theft, claiming that its project was developed internally thanks to the use of the latest generation chips provided by Huawei.
The disappearance from the stores. A few hours later, on the same day, The app suddenly disappeared from the Italian stores of Apple and Google. The decision, apparently linked to requests for moderation by the Chinese authorities, has raised new questions regarding the control by power over emerging technologies.
Meanwhile, the removal has fueled speculations about the possibility that it can return available in Europe shortly. The feeling (at the moment we write, that is On the morning of January 30, 2025) is that this is only the beginning of a story that still has several chapters to tell, with the intent to find out who will conquer the leadership in the sector that represents the present and, above all, the future of technology.
