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Despite the emergence of Chinese-owned DeepSeek’s AI platform, U.S.-based OpenAI’s ChatGPT continues its growth.
The San Francisco-based tech company reported 400 million weekly active users as of February, up 33% from 300 million in December, the company’s chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, told CNBC in an interview yesterday.
Lightcap told the network that the growth is behind the “natural progression” of ChatGPT as it becomes more useful and familiar to a broader group of people.
“People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it,” Lightcap said in the interview, adding that it takes time for individuals to find use cases that resonate. “There’s an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable.”
Unmesh Kulkarni, Head of Gen AI at data analytics company, Tredence, says that ChatGPT is a superior product over DeepSeek, which is also driving growth.
“DeepSeek R1 is an interesting and leading model with reasoning. However, they are not clearly superior to GPT’s or Gemini models across the board in terms of performance, speed, and accuracy,” Kulkarni said, referring to the various models the AI platforms use.
Robert W. Taylor, counsel with IT law firm Carstens, Allen & Gourley, LLP, echos the accuracy concerns about DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT.
“I’ve seen interesting opinions from people who have been vigorously testing DeepSeek and conclude that it is not quite as good from an accuracy or performance standpoint as some of the leading leaning language models,” Taylor says.
The message about DeepSeek’s security concerns may also be resonating with Americans, dampening its appeal.
“If you sign up with DeepSeek directly, their terms and conditions and privacy policy make it crystal clear that all your data will be sent to China, processed there, stored on servers there, and that they can generally use your data to train their models or for any other purpose under the theory of improving their service,” Taylor said