OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman acknowledged that Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek did some “nice work” in the creation of the chatbot now rivalling his company’s ChatGPT.
Altman said in a podcast released on Tuesday that he was going to meet the competing AI firm, but the meeting would not take place during this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris, which he would attend on the same day.
The sudden emergence of DeepSeek last month shook the AI sector and sent US tech stocks tumbling after the Chinese chatbot showed performance in some areas that rivalled ChatGPT.
DeepSeek’s AI models were reportedly developed at only a fraction of the billions of dollars spent by OpenAI on its own platform, raising questions about whether the seemingly untouchable US-based AI firms could in fact be challenged.
Speaking to The Times Tech Podcast, Altman said the timing of DeepSeek’s appearance took him by surprise, even if the appearance of a new challenger did not.
