Tuesday, January 28, 2025 - The Chinese AI app DeepSeek has ceased operations as of last night, reportedly due to a technical issue. The company behind the app restricted new sign-ups to phone numbers within China, effectively barring international users from registering.
This move appears to be an attempt to limit access to the
app amid widespread interest.
A banner on the app’s web chat confirmed that DeepSeek’s services had been targeted by "large-scale malicious attacks," though it did not specify the origin of the attacks. Earlier in the day, the start-up experienced outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free app on the US Apple App Store. These disruptions marked the latest in a series of challenges for DeepSeek, which has rapidly gained popularity.
The app’s unexpected success has drawn attention from the
tech world, with DeepSeek’s AI models perceived to be on par with those from
US-based giants like OpenAI and Meta. This has led to a significant impact on
the US tech sector, with companies losing $1 trillion in valuation due to
concerns that Chinese AI could surpass US innovations.
Founded in 2023, DeepSeek has emerged as a prominent player
in China’s AI landscape, an area that was once thought to be lagging behind US
developments. DeepSeek’s models have drawn attention for being much cheaper to
operate compared to their US counterparts. This has led to increased scrutiny
of US export controls on chips, particularly as DeepSeek’s research team claims
to have trained their models using Nvidia’s H800 chips at a cost of under $6
million.
While the effectiveness of these export controls has been
questioned, the company behind DeepSeek remains largely unknown, with little
information available about its operations. Despite the ongoing disruptions,
the success of DeepSeek’s models has sparked praise from US industry leaders,
including Alexandr Wang of Scale AI, who described the app’s success as a
“wake-up call for America.” Some experts, however, believe the rise of DeepSeek
could benefit US competitors by driving cost efficiency and open-source
research in AI development.
Although DeepSeek’s rise has triggered concerns about
China’s potential to outpace the US in AI, experts like Meta’s Yann LeCun
emphasize that the real takeaway is the power of open-source models, suggesting
that the competition is about access to open research rather than a shift in
global AI dominance. Despite these observations, much about DeepSeek’s
operations and its future remains unclear.
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