OpenAI is investigating whether Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek trained its new chatbot by repeatedly querying the U.S. company’s AI models. The Silicon Valley-based company said Wednesday it has seen various attempts by China-based entities to exfiltrate large volumes of data from its AI tools,

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.

Chatbot vanishes in Italy amid claims OpenAI's model was used to train Chinese AI - DeepSeek says its AI model is similar to US giants like OpenAI, despite fears of censorship around issues sensitive

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.

DeepSeek said it’s restricting signups for new users to people with a mainland China telephone number, claiming that its system had been targeted in “large-scale malicious attacks.”