10 superintelligent memes on DeepSeek vs OpenAI (including Elon Musk’s favourite)
China's DeepSeek vs Silicon Valley: As competition shakes the AI industry, meme-makers are having a gala time watching from the sidelines.
A Chinese artificial intelligence company called DeepSeek has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley by launching its AI model R1, which outperforms some of OpenAI’s leading models on several parameters. At a supposed training cost of just $6 million, R1 achieved performance comparable to OpenAI’s o1 model, which involved billions of dollars in investment from OpenAI and Microsoft.
Over the weekend, DeepSeek’s AI app overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most-downloaded app on Apple's US App Store.
What truly rattled the industry was DeepSeek's claim that it developed its latest model, the R1, at a fraction of the cost that major companies are investing in AI development, primarily on expensive Nvidia chips and software.
The development is significant given the AI boom, ignited by ChatGPT's release in late 2022, has propelled Nvidia to become one of the world's most valuable companies.
As competition shakes the AI industry, meme-makers are having a gala time watching from the sidelines. We collected the 10 best memes that sum up the competition between China’s DeepSeek and the several AI companies in the US.
Here is a look at the 10 best memes on DeepSeek:
This take on ChatGPT vs DeepSeek R1 even amused Elon Musk
And this one took inspiration from the viral Turkish shooter at the Olympics last year
Many digs were aimed at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who said in a post on X that it was “legit invigorating to have a new competitor.”
And China became one of the top keywords in the AI race
US President Donald Trump has said that the sudden rise of the Chinese app DeepSeek “should be a wake-up call” for American companies developing artificial intelligence as they need to be laser-focused on competing to win.
"Today and over the last couple of days, I've been reading about China and some of the companies in China, one in particular coming up with a faster method of AI and a much less expensive method. That's good because you don't have to spend as much money. I view that as a positive as an asset," Trump told House Republicans on Monday at a Florida retreat, the first after he became the president.
(With inputs from agencies)