The US Commerce Department has launched an investigation into whether Chinese AI firm DeepSeek is using advanced US semiconductor chips that are banned for export to China. The probe comes amid concerns that China could be gaining an edge in artificial intelligence, especially after DeepSeek’s AI assistant rapidly became the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store. However, a recent NewsGuard audit exposed the chatbot’s shortcomings, revealing that it achieved only 17% accuracy in news-related queries—failing 83% of the time and performing significantly worse than its Western counterparts, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. The report raises doubts about DeepSeek’s claims of offering a competitive AI model at a lower cost. Meanwhile, fears of China’s AI advancement have contributed to a $1 trillion slump in US tech stocks, fueling further scrutiny of the industry.
