SINGAPORE: Unless you’ve been living under a stone, you may have heard of DeepSeek-R1, the low-cost Foreign AI software that has rattled Silicon Valley and taken the world by storm. But pressure has grown on Chinese tech companies and start-ups to enhance and restart their own models since its famous launch on January 20. A ChatGPT-like verbal type that surpassed its status as China’s top AI bot in 2024, which saw 60 million monthly active users as of November 2024, was released on January 22 from TikTok proprietor ByteDance, who updated its popular Doubao app. Foreign e-commerce giant Alibaba unveiled a new version of its Qwen2.5-Max bot on January 29th, claiming that it “outperforms about entirely,” especially when it comes to things like programming and legitimate logic and solving math issues.  , Another offerings like the open-source Chinese-language type ChatGLM, Baidu’s Ernie Bot and Kimi k1.5, developed by Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI- have also been continuously evolving from basic tools to complex systems, experts note.  ,
WHAT’S BEHIND CHINA’S Artificial BOOM?  ,
President Xi Jinping has long sought to transform China into a technology power, and the country has long had its places on becoming the world’s leader in AI by 2030.  , China opinions Artificial as being” carefully important” and its venture into the industry has been “years in the making”, said Chen Qiheng, an associated scientist at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. After ChatGPT started in 2022 and showed promise of real-world enterprise software, personal and public investments in Chinese AI grew, Chen told CNA. But it was DeepSeek’s fall that actually “encouraged” the idea that smaller players like start-up companies may have responsibilities to play in AI research and advancements,  , he adds.  ,