The world of Artificial Intelligence, or the AI chatbots was disrupted by ChatGPT in 2022. Of course, after that, there have been several other chatbots that have appeared on the scene, but none of them could leave the mark. Well, except for Gemini from Google to a certain extent. But, still, ChatGPT is way better than Gemini in every aspect as per my usage.
But now, the AI chatbot arena is again disrupted by DeepSeek, the new chatbot from China. Touted to be a strong competitor to ChatGPT, the tool definitely deserves attention.
So, here is our attempt at analyzing the DeepSeek and ChatGPT side by side and finding what they are capable of.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is the new AI chatbot from China. Soon after its launch, the chatbot has gained momentum. The chatbot is believed to perform the tasks in a more powerful manner and with fewer resources when compared to its competitors.
DeepSeek V3 is a general-purpose model and DeepSeek R1 is optimized for tasks that need advanced processing and “deep thinking”. The model uses a “Mixture-of-Experts” (MoE) architecture. This means the models use a small portion of their parameters at any given time. This helps reduce the computing power required.
That is what makes DeepSeek a strong contender to ChatGPT, especially after the claims that ChatGPT needs a huge processing power and GPUs.
DeepSeek AI vs ChatGPT – A Comparison
Well, I will compare the two chatbots based on a few features. My primary intention when taking up this comparison is to focus on what ChatGPT offers us right now and then compare it with DeepSeek.
Searching the Internet
Both DeepSeek and ChatGPT let you search over the internet. I searched for the info and they gave me results with ease. They even gave me the citations for information that they collected.
But, there was a huge time difference. Or shall I say, the time difference? ChatGPT gave me accurate information within a second or two.
In the case of DeepSeek, the info was given, but the info took a lot of time to deliver the info. In some cases, the information was delayed or not available.
Many times I got this
Writing code
Next, I tried testing writing the code with the two tools. I asked the two tools to write the code “create a code for adding two numbers”
I found that both DeepSeek and ChatGPT could create the codes with ease. And yes, the codes did work like a charm in both cases.
However, there is no way that can guarantee the authenticity of the codes generated. There may be flaws in the codes generated. Creating a basic game or a basic code may be fine, but full-fledged software and other options may not be reliable with an AI chatbot.
Solving problems
The next test that I took with the AI chatbot was to find if the tools could solve the problems in maths. I shared an image file of the expressions that contained integrations to the AI tools. I wanted to check if they could parse the info from an image file and then solve the equations.
Yes, both tools could parse the info and then solve the equations. Both of them made the results accurate.
But, once again, ChatGPT gave the solutions in just under seconds.
DeepSeek AI gave the results accurately, but once again, it suffered the same issue. The speed was pathetic. It took over 50 to 60 seconds to provide an answer.
Creating images
Let us now check if DeepSeek AI and ChatGPT can help you create images.
I gave a command “create an image of a cat plying with a baby in realistic way” to both the competing tools.
ChatGPT almost instantly gave the following image.
Of course, the image does come with AI traits and does not look realistic.,
DeepSeek could not create an image. It just told me that it could create an image and gave me a list of things that really did not matter. The tool said it could create an image for me, but it simply failed to create an image.
Ability to run locally
AI chatbots come with a lot of privacy-related issues. That would mean whatever you share with the tool will be shared with the OpenAI servers. That would ultimately be used for training their AI models.
That is why people today are looking to run chatbots locally. I decided to check this possibility with both ChatGPT and DeepSeek.
ChatGPT always needs an internet connection to work. It will never be able to run locally. In the case of DeepSeek AI, I found that I can communicate with it locally. Of course, it would be a toned-down version of DeepSeek AI.
Write a poem
I then asked the two chatbots to write a poem. This was to test the creative ability of the tools.
The poem created by ChatGPT had a lot of meaning and gave an appearance of being created by a human. The lines and theme made sense.
In the case of DeepSeek, the meanings and the structure appeared to be a bit childish. Moreover, the choice may vary from person to person. For some Deepsake’s results may be better.
Pricing
For the sake of pricing, the table below should provide you a good insight into the two tools:
| Feature | DeepSeek | ChatGPT |
| Free Access | Free API access available for DeepSeek-V3. (visit deepseek.com) | Free tier available with access to GPT-4o. (visit openai.com) |
| Plus Plan | No Plus plan, completely free as of now | $20/month for ChatGPT Plus
faster response times, and priority access to new features. |
| Pro Plan | No Pro plan, completely free as of now | $200/month for ChatGPT Pro, unlimited access to the O1 model and advanced features |
| API Input Cost | $0.07 per million tokens (cache hit); $0.27 per million tokens (cache miss) for DeepSeek-V3. | $2.50 per million tokens for GPT |
| API Output Cost | $1.10 per million tokens DeepSeek | $10.00 per million tokens for GPT-4O |
Privacy concerns with respect to DeepSeek
Even when the new chatbot has been popular, it does come with a few concerns. The primary ones in this context can be the issues related to privacy.
As with any tool or website, DeepSeek needs you to agree to the privacy policy when you sign up. Since China is known for a different set of privacy and security standards when compared to the rest of the world, it raises a lot of concerns.
Italy and Ireland have already banned the chatbot. Australia says you need to be careful with DeepSeek. These concerns may not be baseless as they are typically posed by the experts in these countries.
One such concern has been the statement in the privacy policy that it collects “keystroke patterns or rhythms,”. This may be quite unusual. However, even TikTok does it, but most of the tools do not include it in their data collection. It is not clear what exactly the data collection in the form of keystrokes and rhythm means in the case of DeepSeek.
Well, what I would recommend is to stay a bit cautious when sharing anything with DeepSeek, at least until these privacy concerns are answered.
Overall Comparison
DeepSeek is an excellent option that does almost everything that ChatGPT does. It is currently available for free, which should make it a prominent option. The tool can also run locally, making it even more interesting.
However, ChatGPT is more developed and comes with a faster performance. It also offers you several advanced capabilities.
If you are looking to find the best between the two, I would recommend checking them out together and finding what appeals to you. In my opinion, DeepSeek is good for basic use, but for more advanced tasks, I would still wish to go with ChatGPT.
My personal thought: I still love ChatGPT more than any other AI tool for my day-to-day tasks. In the last 2-3 days, I tested Deepseek and Qwen AI, and I feel ChatGPT is still better for me than these two.
Moreover, it is always great to see so many AI chatbots coming, they definitely help us make our faster with more accuracy.
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