The DeepSeek chatbot, known as R1, responds to user queries just like its U.S.-based counterparts. Early testing released by DeepSeek suggests that its quality rivals that of other AI products, while the company says it costs less and uses far fewer specialized chips than do its competitors.

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques,