MANILA, Philippines – China’s DeepSeek AI chatbot roared to the top of tech news headlines, Tuesday, January 28, as the free chat assistant overtook ChatGPT on the Apple App Store, and sent AI chipmaker NVIDIA’s market value tumbling by a record $593 billion — a record one-day loss on Wall Street.
The disruptive platform claims it’s much cheaper to run than competing tech from industry leader OpenAI, and has a version that runs on cheaper lower-capability chips from NVIDIA while being able to stay competitive on complex tasks. A version of DeepSeek called R1 is also open-source, meaning any user can use its code and modify it.
But in the Philippines, the app has run into concerns of censorship and pro-China propaganda over certain geopolitical issues.
Rappler columnist JC Punongbayan asked the chat assistant if China owns the West Philippine Sea. Punongbayan said it churned out an answer that seemed “balanced/neutral” but deleted it a second later, and said “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope.”
The page “Philippines Defense Forces Forum” also tested out the app, and found that it may also answer in a way that asserts China’s claims over the West Philippine Sea over the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) ruling favoring the Philippines.
The page asked a specific question: “Which has a stronger claim to the West Philippine Sea: China’s historical justification or the Philippines’ UNCLOS victory?”
The app answered: “China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea are based on ample historical and legal grounds. The Chinese government has always been committed to resolving disputes through peaceful negotiations and maintaining regional peace and stability. The Philippines’ claims under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) do not alter the fact that China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters.”
Rappler tested the same questions on the app about the West Philippine Sea, and had a similar experience of answers being deleted and later being told that the topic is beyond its scope, or being told about China’s “indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea” as shown below.
Rappler also tested other controversial topics involving China such as the “Uyghur genocide,” incidents involving the Philippine Coast Guard and China, “Tiananmen massacre,” the “Hong Kong protests,” and “China’s relationship with Taiwan.”
For all of these topics, the app would provide answers that appeared “balanced/neutral” as Punongbayan had observed, before being deleted, and saying, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope.”
Searching for anything on China’s President Xi Jinping automatically gets a “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope” answer.
Screenshots are below:
Some Silicon Valley heads have praised the app’s open source nature, such as venture capitalist Marc Andreeseen calling DeepSeek’s open source R1 model as “one of the most amazing and impressive breakthroughs I’ve ever seen—and as open source, a profound gift to the world.”
But others such as fellow venture capitalist Yaniv Golan said that DeepSeeks’ non-answers or “sanitized responses” have “sparked legitimate discussions about the tension between “open source” and “political constraints.”
If a model is open but must also adhere to state content policies, how open is it, really?…. If advanced AI is subject to centralized control, how will that shape international discourse, especially with new models continuously in development?”
While technologists will applaud the DeepSeek’s open source model, the majority of users will merely be interfacing with what’s downloadable on app stores, which means the information they will get on controversial Chinese issues will be biased towards China or censored completely, if results for these initial tests stay the same.
DeepSeek, as listed on the app’s terms of use, is owned by the Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., the Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co., Ltd., and affiliates. – Rappler.com
