ChatGPT killer or privacy risk: What is DeepSeek and why is everyone talking about it?

It’s nearly impossible to escape the online hype surrounding DeepSeek, a relatively new and unknown AI chatbot, right now. In just a few days, it has not only dethroned ChatGPT’s dominance in benchmarks but also become the most downloaded app on iOS and Android. What’s even more impressive is that the AI was developed by a small Chinese startup with a tiny budget and relatively outdated hardware.

So what exactly is DeepSeek, why has it garnered so much attention, and should you consider using it over ChatGPT or Gemini? I dug into the Internet’s new darling AI and took it for a test-drive to find out.