Barely have Western AI-related companies recovered from the shock that followed the launch of the Chinese Deepseek - an AI model that has been described as at least as good as the American Chat GPT, but developed at a significantly lower cost and with fewer advanced data chips.
Now, the next AI model from China is coming. Tech giant and e-commerce giant Alibaba have launched Qwen2.5-Max - and according to Alibaba themselves, their model is at least as good or better on several points compared to other leading systems. Notably, however, it has not been compared to Deepseek's R1 model.
The rapid emergence of Chinese AI models is likely to fuel anxiety in the US, where companies have invested billions of dollars in AI development. And now, two cheaper Chinese challengers have appeared in a short time.
Hopefully, the launch of Deepseek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries, we must have a laser focus to win the competition, said US President Donald Trump the other day.