An AI chatbot backed by the French government has been taken offline shortly after it launched, after providing nonsensical answers to simple mathematical equations and even recommending that one user eat cow’s eggs.

Chinese artificial intelligence startup company DeepSeek stunned markets and AI experts with its claim that it built its immensely popular chatbot at a fraction of the cost of those made by American tech titans.

DeekSeek’s chatbot with the R1 model is a stunning release from the Chinese startup. While it’s an innovation in training efficiency, hallucinations still run rampant.

A CHEAP AI-powered chatbot from China has sent shockwaves around the world, causing panic for Western tech firms who thought they were leaps ahead in the artificial intelligence race. The DeepSeek

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts. DeepSeek is backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund that uses AI to inform its trading decisions.

The chatbot from China appears to perform a number of tasks as well as its American competitors do, but it censors topics such as Tiananmen Square.

The DeepSeek chatbot, known as R1, responds to user queries just like its U.S.-based counterparts. Early testing released by DeepSeek suggests that its quality rivals that of other AI products, while the company says it costs less and uses far fewer specialized chips than do its competitors.

If the AI model DeepSeek was made on a shoestring, and despite restrictions on US chips, building AI technology might be cheaper and faster than the way US companies are doing it.

Major US technology firms stocks dropped after the emergence of a low-cost chatbot built by a Chinese AI firm.

Competing with OpenAI’s o1, DeepSeek’s models scored higher on benchmarks and disrupted the AI market, sparking debates on U.S.-China tech dynamics.