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An evaluation of DeepSeek compared to other AI tools Part eight of an eight-part series of blogs
Much has been made in the media of how the new Chinese AI tool DeepSeek rivals almost anything that the likes of ChatGPT can offer. Does it? What this blog covers Getting started with DeepSeek Test 1 - summarising text Test 2 - programming ability Test 3 - presenting arguments Test 4 - creating images Test 5 - role-playing Conclusions and recommendations (this blog)

An evaluation of DeepSeek compared to other AI tools

Part eight of an eight-part series of blogs

Much has been made in the media of how the new Chinese AI tool DeepSeek rivals almost anything that the likes of ChatGPT can offer. Does it?

What this blog covers
Getting started with DeepSeek
Test 1 - summarising text
Test 2 - programming ability
Test 3 - presenting arguments
Test 4 - creating images
Test 5 - role-playing
Conclusions and recommendations (this blog)

Posted by Andy Brown on 03 February 2025

I reached the same conclusions about DeepSeek as I did in my original series of tests: all the AI tools are remarkably similar. Compared with its competitors (or at least the ones I reviewed: ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot and Gemini) DeepSeek is very ... average. Here's a quick summary of the pros and cons:

Issue	Summary of pros and cons
Speed	When the server wasn't busy, DeepSeek produced results at a similar speed to ther other AI tools. However, the server WAS busy quite often, probably because DeepSeek is benefiting (or sufering?) from the huge amount of publicity it's receiving at the moment.
Cost	DeepSeek is free, whereas ChatGPT's best features (to take one example of an AI tool) require a $20 per month account to use. Most remarkably, it cost far less to train DeepSeek than it did to train any of the other main large language models.
Performance	DeepSeek's results were similar to those of the other AI tools. It lacked the occasional spark of "humanity" which Gemini and (especially) Claude showed in their tests, but it's output is more than serviceable.
Image creation	At the moment you can't create images within the DeepSeek website, but I'm sure this will change soon.

I think any discussion of the relative merits of the different AI tools has also to mention that DeepSeek is a Chinese company (it doesn't try to hide this: there are Chinese characters at the bottom of the home page). Different people will have different views on this!

Parts of this blog
What this blog covers Getting started with DeepSeek Test 1 - summarising text Test 2 - programming ability Test 3 - presenting arguments Test 4 - creating images Test 5 - role-playing Conclusions and recommendations (this blog)