DeepSeek Impact: When Chinese AI Begins to Break the US Monopoly

There are two distinct narratives about DeepSeek.

The first narrative comes from the United States: DeepSeek is a "copycat" that trains its own AI by "distilling" ChatGPT and other US models. OpenAI has already made accusations.

The second narrative comes from China: DeepSeek is the "world's free AI," not controlled by the United States, breaking the US's technological monopoly.

The truth may lie somewhere in between. But whatever the truth is, DeepSeek has changed the game.

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company founded by High-Flyer Capital Management, a quantitative hedge fund. Its first product to cause a sensation was DeepSeek-V3, a large language model comparable to GPT-4 and Claude on many benchmarks.

But what really caught attention was its price. DeepSeek's API costs about one-tenth of OpenAI's. For the same task, you can accomplish it with DeepSeek for less money.

"We are very close to the launch of the latest Chinese AI model, DeepSeek-V4. There is much speculation about the efficiency of the upcoming model compared to American models." — @Eng_china5

The release of V4 has been delayed. On the eve of the Lunar New Year, someone asked on X: Has DeepSeek V4 been delayed?

This may mean one of two things: either they encountered technical problems, or they are doing final optimizations. In the AI race, delaying a release is usually not a good sign.

"Distillation" Controversy

OpenAI has accused DeepSeek of using "distillation" technology to train its own model using ChatGPT's output.

"OpenAI says China's DeepSeek trained its AI by 'replicating' ChatGPT and other U.S. models." — @Coinvo

This accusation is not new. In the AI industry, using the output of other models to train your own model is a gray area. Technically, this is called "knowledge distillation," and it is an effective technique. But the question is: Does doing so violate the terms of service of the original model?

OpenAI's terms of service prohibit using ChatGPT output to train competing products. But what if DeepSeek did not directly use OpenAI's API, but obtained data in other ways? What if they used publicly available dialogue datasets?

There are no simple legal answers to these questions. But they reveal a deeper question: When AI models become powerful enough, how can you protect "intelligence" from being copied?

Cost Revolution

DeepSeek's most important contribution may not be its technology, but its pricing.

Before DeepSeek, the AI API market was basically an oligopoly. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google had similar pricing, with no real price competition.

DeepSeek broke this pattern. When you can get similar quality for one-tenth of the price, why pay more?

"Chinese AI DeepSeek is free for the world and free from US control." — @Eng_china5

This narrative is geopolitically powerful. For countries and companies that do not want to rely on US technology, DeepSeek offers an alternative.

The Rise of Chinese AI

DeepSeek is not the only Chinese AI company. Qwen (Alibaba), Kimi (Moonshot AI), MiniMax, and GLM (Zhipu AI) are all making rapid progress.> "China won. This is another DeepSeek moment. MiniMax 2.5 is now the best model in the world. On par with Opus 4.6, SOTA in coding, excel data analysis, deep research." — @askOkara

This statement may be overly optimistic, but the direction is correct. Chinese AI is rapidly catching up, and even leading in some areas.

Interestingly, this competition is good for American consumers. When there are multiple suppliers, prices will fall and quality will rise. Monopolies are broken and innovation accelerates.

Geopolitical Perspective

The rise of DeepSeek cannot be separated from the geopolitical context.

The United States has imposed AI chip export controls on China, attempting to limit China's access to advanced computing power. But DeepSeek proves that even with chip restrictions, algorithmic innovation can still lead to breakthroughs.

"The U.S. burned cash on AI until cash flow went negative. Meanwhile, under chip sanctions, China produced DeepSeek last year and Seedance2 this year." — @nmamtbh

This is a classic innovator's dilemma. When you restrict resources, people find more efficient ways to use limited resources. U.S. sanctions may have actually accelerated China's AI innovation.

Language and Bias

DeepSeek has also sparked discussions about AI bias.

"DeepSeek responded to my prompt in Chinese." — @h_armlesspotato

When a user asks a question in English, DeepSeek answers in Chinese. This seems like a small problem, but it reveals the AI model's "cultural background."

A more sensitive issue is political bias. Some people tested DeepSeek's responses to sensitive topics:

"No matter how many times I asked, it kept saying it's Chinese territory. About Tiananmen, it said 'I cannot answer this question right now. Let's change the topic.'" — User test from Japan

This is not surprising. Every AI model has some form of content filtering, and these filters reflect the values and limitations of the creators. OpenAI's models have American-style political correctness, and DeepSeek has Chinese-style censorship.

The question is not which model is "more objective"—no model is truly objective. The question is whether users know what kind of system they are interacting with.

Local Deployment

One interesting use of DeepSeek is local deployment. Because it is relatively lightweight (compared to GPT-4), it can run on consumer-grade hardware.

"I set up DeepSeek v3.2 4-bit on Mac Studio. Now I'm installing OpenClaw on Raspberry Pi 5 with camera and microphone. Keeping it offline for security." — @AlicanKiraz0

This represents a different way of using AI than cloud APIs. When you run a model locally:

• No data leaves your device
• There is no pay-per-use billing
• There are no terms of service restrictions

This is very valuable for privacy-sensitive applications.

Competitive Landscape

Similarweb data shows that Grok first surpassed DeepSeek in January 2026:

"Grok (314.0 million visits) surpasses DeepSeek (298.3 million visits) for the first time in January and becomes the third most-visited Gen AI tool after ChatGPT and Gemini." — @Similarweb

This illustrates that the competition in the AI market is very fierce. Today's leader may be tomorrow's laggard. DeepSeek once gained attention for its low cost, but now Grok, Claude, and Gemini are all offering similar or better cost performance.

Developer's Perspective

For developers, DeepSeek provides more choices.

"Here are our go-to models: Research → Claude Sonnet 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro. Writing → GPT-5, Claude Sonnet 4. Deep analysis → GPT-5 Think, DeepSeek-R1." — @Sider_AI

DeepSeek-R1 is specifically recommended for "deep analysis." This indicates that DeepSeek has advantages in certain specific tasks, even if it may not be number one in overall rankings.

Bottom Line

DeepSeek represents an important turning point in the AI industry.

It proves that:

1. AI models do not have to be extremely expensive
2. China can compete in the AI field
3. Open source and low-cost models can challenge closed commercial products

But it also raises questions:

1. How to protect the intellectual property of AI "intelligence"?
2. How do AIs with different cultural backgrounds handle sensitive topics?
3. How will geopolitics shape the future of AI?

DeepSeek's story is not over yet. V4 is still being delayed, and competition is getting fiercer. But regardless of the outcome, it has already changed the landscape of the AI industry.

When monopolies are broken, true innovation begins.

---This article is based on an analysis of 100 discussions about DeepSeek on X/Twitter on February 18, 2026.