Beijing (TDI): DeepSeek has announced it would temporarily restrict user registrations following large-scale malicious attacks on its services.
The Chinese AI app recently toppled OpenAI’s ChatGPT from its title of most-downloaded free application in Apple’s App Store.
DeepSeek on Monday said it would temporarily limit user registrations “due to large-scale malicious attacks” on its services, though the current users will be able to log in as usual.
The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup has generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks as a fast-growing rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other leading AI tools.
DeepSeek Dethrones ChatGPT, Shakes Tech Markets
Earlier on Monday, DeepSeek took over rival OpenAI’s coveted spot as the most-downloaded free application in the U.S. on Apple’s App Store, dethroning ChatGPT.
It helped inspire a considerable sell-off in international tech stocks.
Buzz about the company, which was established in 2023 and released its R1 model last week, has spread to tech observers, investors and developers, who say that the hype — and ensuing fear of falling behind in the ever-changing AI hype cycle — may be warranted.
Also Read: Copilot Gets Voice Chat, Photo Features
Especially in the era of the generative AI arms race, where tech giants and firms alike are racing to ensure they don’t fall behind in a market predicted to top 1 trillion dollars in revenue within a decade.
DeepSeek is said to have emerged from a Chinese hedge fund’s AI research unit in April 2023, focusing on large language models and advancing towards artificial general intelligence, or AGI — a branch of AI that equals or surpasses human intellect in many tasks, which OpenAI and its rivals say they’re fast pursuing.
Also Read: Snapchat: Footsteps Feature Improves Location Tracking
The buzz around DeepSeek especially started to spread last week, when the startup released R1, its reasoning model that rivals OpenAI’s o1.
It is an open-source app, meaning that any AI developer can use it, and has rocketed to the top of applications stores and industry leaderboards, with users appreciating its performance and reasoning capabilities.
The startup’s models were notably built despite the Washington’s curbing chip exports to China three times in three years.