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When will Apple start beta testing iOS 18.4?

Now that iOS 18.3 has been available for almost two weeks now, we’re all wondering what the release date of iOS 18.4 beta 1 will be. Unlike the previous version, iOS 18.4 is expected to be one of the most important updates of the iOS 18 cycle. That said, here’s what we know about iOS 18.4 and when Apple could start beta testing it.

iOS 18.4 beta 1 release date based on previous x.4 updates

It’s been almost ten days since Apple released iOS 18.3. In the past, this is how long Apple has taken to start beta testing an x.4 update after releasing an x.3 update:

  • iOS 17.4: 3 days
  • iOS 16.4: 24 days
  • iOS 15.4: 1 day
  • iOS 14.4: 2 days

With iOS 13.4, Apple took an incredible 57 days to start beta testing it. However, you shouldn’t have to worry about waiting that long, as the company promised Apple Intelligence would expand to more languages in April, confirming iOS 18.4 will launch by then.

In addition, iOS 16.4 wasn’t a very notable update, with the most impressive features being new emoji and Crash Detection optimization. With that in mind, there wasn’t a good reason for the company to delay the start of its beta testing.

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That said, BGR has reason to believe Apple could seed iOS 18.4 beta 1 any day now. While previous x.4 betas had two to five builds, it’s possible that Apple will spend longer testing this upcoming version, as it has important in store for iOS as a whole.

iPhone 16Image source: José Adorno for BGR

These are the most important features we hope Apple adds in iOS 18.4

Unlike the previous versions, iOS 18.4 is expected to open the path for a truly competitive Siri, a personal assistant that can finally understand context and look through your messages and apps to find precisely what you need. While it’s unclear if these features will be ready in iOS 18.4 beta 1, the company will likely start adding these Apple Intelligence improvements over the coming months.

In this update, Apple says its AI platform will support Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Apple is also expected to offer other minor features, such as creating images in Image Playground in Sketch style and a better display of Priority Notifications across Apple and third-party apps. Finally, new emojis might be available with this update.

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DeepSeek: Welcome to US artificial intelligence’s Sputnik moment

Following last weekend’s introduction of the latest large language model (LLM) from DeepSeek, ChatGPT’s new artificial intelligence (AI) rival has topped the Apple App Store for iPhone downloads.

The DeepSeek R1 LLM is open source and uses reasoning combined with what the company calls “cold start data”, which means that rather than trawling the internet and social media sites to amass vast quantities of machine learning data, it relies instead on reinforced learning to improve accuracy.

On its GitHub page, the developers of DeepSeek describe R1 as a large-scale reinforcement learning on the base model. “We directly apply reinforcement learning to the base model without relying on supervised fine-tuning as a preliminary step,” it says. “This approach allows the model to explore chain-of-thought for solving complex problems.”

An estimated 2.1 million searches for DeepSeek were recorded over the weekend, with at least 1.6 million of these on Sunday 26 January alone. This is 12.3% of ChatGPT’s 13 million searches in the same timeframe.

Along with taking a different approach to ChatGPT, the interest in DeepSeek is also being driven by competitive pricing and the fact that the code is open source.

While OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, charges $2.50 per million input tokens for its GPT-4o model, DeepSeek is priced at $0.14 per million input tokens in situations where the AI engine is able to draw on previously cached information. Non-cached inputs are priced at $0.55 per million tokens.

The extent of interest in the AI from the Chinese firm resulted in turmoil in the valuation of tech stocks in the US. Reuters reported that Nvidia saw its share price drop 17%, which effectively wiped $593bn off its market valuation.

Wake-up call

In a speech on Monday, US president Donald Trump described DeepSeek as a wake-up call for the US tech sector.

Among the numerous subjects Trump spoke about in his speech to Republican party members of Congress were the executive orders revoking the AI regulations introduced under former president Joe Biden. “We don’t want to have any future president ever sabotage our economy with out-of-control regulations,” he said. “Last week I signed an order revoking Joe Biden’s destructive artificial intelligence regulations so that AI companies can once again focus on being the best, not just being the most woke.”

He then referenced DeepSeek as he continued talking about why deregulation is important for AI in the US. “Today and over the last couple of days I’ve been reading about China and [one Chinese company] in particular coming up with a faster method of AI and a much less expensive method. Hopefully the release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.”

DeepSeek’s developers have been able to combine cutting-edge algorithms to slash the energy demands of AI training and deployment. In his speech, Trump described what DeepSeek had achieved as “good”, since companies aiming to develop AI applications that use DeepSeek do not have to spend as much money compared with rival LLMs. “I view that as a positive, as an asset,” he added.
 
Commenting on what the rise of DeepSeek has meant to financial markets, Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at investment platform Saxo, pointed out that DeepSeek took only two months to develop and less than $6m to build, using reduced-capability chips from Nvidia. This is significant given that the Biden administration banned the export of high-end Nvidia graphics processors (GPUs) to China in 2023.

“US tech companies are trading at premium valuations, with major AI players like Nvidia, Microsoft and Alphabet commanding forward P/E [price to earnings] multiples far above historical averages,” she said. “With these stocks priced for perfection, even minor disruptions, such as DeepSeek proving advanced AI can be built without top-tier chips, could weigh heavily on share prices. For Nvidia, in particular, its role as a key supplier of AI chips makes it vulnerable if demand for its high-end products wanes.”

The idea of lower-cost and more energy-efficient AI coming from DeepSeek appears to have an immediate impact both on the US tech giants and the energy sector, which has been banking on the growth of AI-fuelled power consumption.

“DeepSeek’s breakthrough signals a shift toward efficiency in AI, which will redefine both energy and AI markets,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory giant DeVere Group. “The opportunities for investors willing to act now are enormous.

“This challenges the assumption that AI’s growth is tied to ever-increasing energy consumption. While the market is reacting to short-term uncertainty, efficiency-driven AI models will expand adoption into new markets and industries. This means more widespread use, deeper integration and, ultimately, sustained demand for energy solutions.”

Arguably, it’s the fact that DeepSeek has been able to achieve results using inferior hardware and offer its LLM at a highly competitive price that is set to change every organisation’s approach to AI: it doesn’t necessarily require throwing vast amounts of costly GPUs at the hardware and having to recoup these costs by charging end users a premium.

“By developing cutting-edge generative AI models without relying on the latest, most expensive hardware, DeepSeek has demonstrated that agility and strategy can outpace raw computational power,” said Kjell Carlsson, head of AI strategy at Domino Data Lab. “Their achievements also highlight the vulnerability of incumbents in the generative AI space – proving that open-source innovation continues to be a powerful equaliser, enabling challengers to match and even surpass established players years into the revolution.”

What all this means is that DeepSeek signifies Chinese competition to Silicon Valley’s existing AI models and is a demonstration of how the pace of AI development is pushing boundaries and lowering costs. 

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Some RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs have seriously inflated price tags, climbing as high as 70% over MSRP in the case of one Asus model

  • The Asus ROG Astral LC RTX 5090 tips the scales at $3,409
  • Some other RTX 5090 and 5080 models also command a hefty premium over MSRP
  • Stock of these GPUs remains vanishingly thin anyway

Nvidia’s RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs are off to a shaky start, not just because of the fact that these new Blackwell graphics cards aren’t available to buy – they sold out immediately, more or less – but also due to pricing on third-party boards.

Wccftech has been scanning pricing across the Asus and MSI Blackwell ranges, and the findings will likely scare, if not terrify, gamers out there who are mulling a high-end GPU purchase.

When stock does come back in – there are smatterings of live pre-orders here and there right now, but not much else, although be sure to keep an eye on our guides on where to buy the RTX 5090 and also the RTX 5080 GPU – price tags are looking seriously steep.

The crown for the most eye-watering price of all is awarded to the Asus ROG Astral LC RTX 5090, a behemoth of a flagship that admittedly pulls out all the proverbial stops (the ‘LC’ refers to the incorporated liquid cooling system), but it’ll set you back $3,409 in the US currently at the graphics card maker’s own store.

Even the cheapest RTX 5090 GPU that Asus currently sells, the TUF Gaming model, is a weighty $2,749, which is over a third more expensive than the MSRP as set by Nvidia (and the asking price for its Founders Edition). Remember, this is the base model from Asus, you can’t go any lower.

At least with the RTX 5080, there is an Asus model at the MSRP of $999 on its web store, the Prime model – so that’s something. If you want the TUF Gaming model of the RTX 5080, though, this will set you back $1,484, quite a hefty hike for a variant that isn’t a top-end card. (The ROG Astral, air cooled, RTX 5080 touches $1,649, all prices correct at the time of writing).

MSI does somewhat better at keeping a lid on pricing, but there are some difficult to swallow price tags nonetheless. There are no RTX 5080 models at MSRP on MSI’s US store, and the cheapest is the Ventus 3X at $1,139, although that’s not a big jump. The top-end RTX 5080 Suprim Liquid SOC is pitched lower than the Asus ROG Astral, though, at $1,499.

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MSI’s RTX 5090 graphics cards kick off with the Ventus 3X which is at $2,379 on its store, more reasonably priced than the baseline flagship from Asus, but still a 20% hike (almost) over the MSRP. If you’re looking at the RTX 5090 Suprim Liquid SOC, though, this graphics card is an eye-watering $2,789 on the MSI store.

An unhappy PC Gamer sat at their desk

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Analysis: Okay, so a liquid-cooled flagship was never going to be cheap, but…

Before the new Blackwell graphics cards emerged, the prediction was that they could be priced considerably higher than the MSRPs. And that has indeed broadly come true, although part of the problem here is that third-party board makers seem to have inflated prices even further after all the clamor and stock shortages around the RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs.

As an example at the highest-end, the mentioned Asus ROG Astral LC RTX 5090 is the priciest of all Blackwell GPUs at $3,409. However, it was announced at $3,100 (on Reddit, and caused quite a stir at that price), so somehow, there’s been another $300 heaped on top of the already exorbitant asking price.

I’m not impressed with these kinds of shenanigans as it’s bad enough that stock is stupidly difficult to get hold of, and scalpers are causing huge price inflation by reselling RTX 5080 and 5090 graphics cards, without the actual board makers themselves deciding to try and push even harder for profits.

Is this just market dynamics – a reflection of thin supply and big demand? Well, yes, it is to an extent, and doubtless pricing will settle down eventually anyway, if you can be patient. (Indeed, there are still some big question marks over how long we might be waiting for pricing to even out to a more acceptable level overall).

Meanwhile, it’s clearly true that asking prices remain something of a moot point seeing as there are hardly any RTX 5090 or 5080 graphics cards for sale at all, whether at recommended pricing, or third-party pricing.

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ChatGPT no longer requires you to have an account to search

Google’s dominance in online search has been virtually undisputed for over 20 years, but a real challenger might have finally arrived. As of Wednesday, OpenAI no longer requires you to log in to use ChatGPT’s search engine. In fact, you don’t even need an account.

“ChatGPT search is now available to everyone in regions where ChatGPT is available,” OpenAI noted on its website in an update. “No signup required.”

OpenAI launched its search engine on October 31st, 2024, granting access to paid subscribers and SearchGPT waitlist users. It then rolled out to free users on December 16, but now, anyone can search on ChatGPT by visiting ChatGPT.com and clicking the “Search” button.

“The search model is a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using novel synthetic data generation techniques, including distilling outputs from OpenAI o1-preview,” OpenAI explained last year. “ChatGPT search leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners, to provide the information users are looking for.”

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Now that everyone has unrestricted access to ChatGPT search, it will be fascinating to see how many people try to ditch Google for good, and how successful they are at doing so.

This is the latest in a flood of major updates and new releases from OpenAI in recent weeks as the company pushes back against DeepSeek mania. Within the last two weeks alone, OpenAI has launched two AI agents: Operator and Deep Research.

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Rumored prices for third-party RTX 5080 graphics cards soar above Nvidia’s MSRP, and I’m worried entry-level models will sell out in a flash

  • A Finnish retailer has aired price tags for Gigabyte’s RTX 5080 models
  • Only the WindForce variant is at the MSRP
  • The six other RTX 5080 boards shown are 15% to 35% pricier

Nvidia’s RTX 5080 is priced at an MSRP of $999 in the US – and in line with that in other regions – which was a pleasant surprise, but it seems that the worst fears of some gamers might be realized, if pricing on some third-party boards that just popped up is anything to go by.

This info come from a Finnish retailer, Proshop, which has jumped the gun and listed Gigabyte’s RTX 5080 models with pricing, and only one graphics card is set at the MSRP in Finland (€1,229) out of a total of seven boards.

As VideoCardz reports, only the Gigabyte WindForce model is pitched at that €1,229, with the other six variants being a good deal more expensive.

Even the most affordable of those non-WindForce offerings, the Gaming OC and Aero OC, are both €1,419, which is a considerable premium over the baseline graphics card.

The Aorus variants are a good deal more expensive still, with the priciest version of those, the Aorus Xtreme WaterForce, reaching €1,669.

What this means is that Gigabyte has one RTX 5080 board, the WindForce, at the MSRP, and the other flavors are between 15% and 35% pricier. Obviously we should exercise a whole lot of caution around these prices, in case they turn out to be wrong somehow, or placeholders, but we’re very close to release now (and they sound plausible).

The Nvidia RTX 5080 GPU on a green background.

(Image credit: Nvidia)

Analysis: An ominous sign – but don’t panic yet

As noted at the outset, this was the worry I – and many others – expressed at the time of Nvidia’s announcement of the RTX 5080 pricing.

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On the one hand, it was great to see that $999 MSRP attached to the RTX 5080, when rumors had suggested Nvidia might sell it at $1,200 in the US (and proportional to that elsewhere), or maybe a good chunk more than that. Especially considering that the RTX 5090 price got jacked up.

On the other hand, the main concern was that most third-party models wouldn’t be at MSRP, and that scenario is exactly what appears to be playing out with Gigabyte’s RTX 5080 graphics cards – at least if the info from Proshop is correct. And it may not be, as already mentioned, so we mustn’t jump to any conclusions yet.

This remains just an ominous hint at the moment, then, although even if it proves right, there’s a chance that other graphics card makers won’t follow suit, and may have more models at the MSRP level. Or rather, their second-tier above baseline models hopefully won’t have a 15% hike, and instead exhibit a more modest increase.

If there are very few third-party RTX 5080 models on sale at the MSRP (or close), then the likelihood is that at launch – and maybe for quite some time after – those boards will sell out in a flash (along with Nvidia’s Founders Edition). Making the reality of getting an RTX 5080 at the MSRP level a shaky prospect, in short, but there’s still hope yet that this scenario won’t play out.

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Nvidia RTX 5050 was missing in action at CES 2025 – but the budget GPU might just have been spotted in a surprising laptop

  • LG Gram marketing materials show the laptop with an RTX 5050 GPU
  • The rest of the promo blurb indicates an RTX 4050 graphics card, though
  • This suggests Nvidia delayed the RTX 5050, but it’s likely not that far off

Nvidia revealed its new Blackwell laptop GPUs alongside RTX 5000 desktop graphics cards recently at CES 2025, but we’ve just got a sighting of the lowest-tier mobile card that wasn’t aired at the show.

You may recall that past rumors claimed Nvidia might unveil the full suite of RTX 5000 laptop GPUs at CES, from the RTX 5050 up to the RTX 5090, but we only got RTX 5070 models and upwards – the RTX 5060 and 5050 weren’t anywhere to be seen.

However, in the latter case, promotional material for the LG Gram for 2025 shows the laptop equipped with an RTX 5050 GPU – while the provided specs refer to an RTX 4050 model, confusingly.

As discovered by BullsLab Jay on X – check out the above post – we see the RTX 5050, except with the accompanying details showing a GPU with the Lovelace architecture (RTX 4000) and GDDR6 VRAM.

What could have happened theoretically – add plenty of seasoning – is that LG was planning on the RTX 5050 for the launch of this notebook, but Nvidia delayed the GPU. So LG switched to the RTX 4050 instead, but someone made a mistake and left the RTX 5050 name in, by the look of things.

LG Gram Pro 16 OLED

(Image credit: Valerio Porcu)

Analysis: A delayed Nvidia RTX 5050?

This theory seems plausible enough given that we heard more than one piece of chatter from the grapevine that Nvidia would be showing off the RTX 5050 to 5090 mobile GPUs at CES 2024. Which would also mirror what happened at the Lovelace notebook launch, where the RTX 4050 and upwards were all revealed.

The upshot is that it seems likely the RTX 5050 will get an airing in the future, the question being: how long will we have to wait? To an extent, that’s anyone’s guess, but if this purported GPU was indeed sidelined late in the game by Nvidia, just before CES 2025, there must be a good reason for that. So, don’t expect to see the RTX 5050 soon, but I’d be surprised if we have to wait all that long for this mobile graphics card to turn up.

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Away from LG’s Gram notebook, the RTX 5050 (and RTX 5060) will enable cheaper gaming laptops to be pepped up with next-generation GPUs, and that includes the use of DLSS 4, which will help to speed up frame rates for on-the-go gaming.

In theory, the RTX 5050 will run with 8GB of VRAM, which would be a solid allocation for this level of GPU – considering it’ll match not just the RTX 5060 (in theory), but also the RTX 5070, which we know has controversially stuck with 8GB of video RAM (perhaps the reason why the mobile side of Blackwell was a rather lowkey affair at the recent CES).

However, Nvidia does have neural shader tricks up its sleeve for textures which, just like DLSS 4, the company argues is going to make a huge difference to RTX 5000 graphics cards.

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Concerns over Fujitsu billing application used at SSE Airtricity in Republic of Ireland

Fujitsu has been forced to escalate problems with a key IT system used by Airtricity in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) to avoid potentially impacting the energy company’s customers, Computer Weekly has learned.

Fears over the billing application developed for SSE Airtricity RoI by Fujitsu have raised alarms in Fujitsu’s leadership.

According to a source, the issues should have been fixed as part of a Fujitsu initiative, known as Project Ivy, launched after the Post Office Horizon scandal, which seeks to tackle critical software defects, and improve testing and governance across its systems. “It has had to be escalated for urgent attention before it does real harm to customers,” they said.

Fujitsu said it’s reviewing its software for potential problems in response to the Post Office Horizon scandal. In his fifth witness statement to the scandal public inquiry, Paul Patterson, the CEO of Fujitsu in Europe, stated that the company is addressing the remediation of systems and technology under the Rebuilding Trust Programme.

After multiple attempts by Computer Weekly, Fujitsu refused to comment on the alleged problems with its application. SSE Airtricity said: “The other SSE Airtricity services which utilise the all island billing system supplied by Hansen and the proprietary system supported by Fujitsu include the Republic of Ireland business. There are no issues related to system performance which are materially impacting customers.”

There is no suggestion the Hansen system is causing the issues. According to the source, “the billing application is separate from Hansen’s billing system but integrates with it, processing key data before passing it on for billing and account reconciliation”.

The source told Computer Weekly that Fujitsu is concerned, and that the issue has been escalated to Fujitsu in Japan.

Airtricity would not comment on whether Fujitsu is addressing these issues, stating that “any queries regarding Fujitsu business operations should be directed to the company itself”, but Fujitsu refused to comment, citing customer confidentiality.

In March 2024, Fujitsu closed down its Republic of Ireland business for new business after a review of the operation’s performance and market outlook, with the contract with SSE Airtricity transferred to the UK business.

“It is with regret that we have taken a difficult decision and plan not to pursue new business in the Irish office,” the email stated. “Going forward, Fujitsu plans to refocus its Irish operations on the fulfilment of existing customer contractual commitments.”

Long-term partners

Fujitsu and Airtricity have a long relationship, with Fujitsu playing a key role in its operations across both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Fujitsu developed and integrated a Customer Information System (CIS), automated billing and customer communication processes and managed the system integration and selection of IT suppliers.

In December 2023, a senior SSE Airtricity employee in RoI publicly praised Fujitsu’s role in supporting its operations, presenting a Certificate of Excellence to the IT development team on behalf of SSE Airtricity’s business and IT customer support teams.

The billing application concerns come months after Centrica chose not to award a deal worth about £45m to Fujitsu, citing concerns about the reputational damage stemming from its involvement in the Post Office scandal.

CRM migration issues

Separately, last year, problems were experienced by SSE Airtricity customers when a CRM software migration caused service issues in Northern Ireland. The source told Computer Weekly: “The CRM migration was part SSE Airtricity RoI’s Project Genesis programme, which included upgrading core billing and CRM systems.”

Local reports described problems, which were unrelated to Fujitsu, being experienced by customers in Northern Ireland. SSE Airtricity said this happened during a CRM system migration.

In November, The Belfast Telegraph reported that SSE Airtricity had sent elderly and vulnerable residents in a social housing development gas bills despite them not having gas boilers installed, and this continued even after the company was told as much.

Airtricity said the issues in Northern Ireland have been resolved. “SSE Airtricity Gas Northern Ireland undertook a CRM system migration to a new platform which was completed in May 2024 for all gas customers in Northern Ireland,” said an SSE Airtricity spokesperson. “We took a phased approach to migrating customers to the platform in order to minimise disruption. While some customers experienced service issues as the systems bedded in, these have since been resolved.”

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Taylor Swift singing in Japanese: Mind-blowing new AI tech from China

Less than a year ago, Microsoft’s VASA-1 blew my mind. The company showed how it could animate any photo and turn it into a video featuring the person in the image. This wasn’t the only impressive part, as the subject of the image would also be able to speak in the video.

VASA-1 surpassed anything we’d seen back then. This was April 2024, when we had already seen Sora, OpenAI’s text-to-video generation tool that would not be released until December. Sora did not feature similarly advanced face animation and audio synchronization technologies.

Unlike OpenAI, Microsoft never intended to make VASA-1 available to the project. I said then that a public tool like VASA-1 could harm, as anyone could create misleading videos of people saying whatever the creator conceives. Microsoft’s research project also indicated that it would be only a matter of time before others could develop similar technology.

Now, TikTok parent company ByteDance has developed an AI tool called OmniHuman-1 that can replicate what VASA-1 did while taking things to a whole new level.

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The Chinese company can take a single photo and turn it into a fully animated video. The subject in the image can speak in sync with the provided audio, similar to what the VASA-1 examples showed. But it gets crazier than that. OmniHuman-1 can also animate body part movements and gestures, as seen in the following examples.

The similarities to VASA-1 shouldn’t be surprising. The Chinese researchers mention on the OmniHuman-1’s research page that they used VASA-1 as a template, and even took audio samples from Microsoft and other companies.

According to Business Standard, OmniHuman-1 uses multiple input sources simultaneously, including images, audio, text, and body poses. The result is a more precise and fluid motion synthesis.

ByteDance used 19,000 hours of video footage to create OmniHuman-1. That’s how they were able to teach the AI to create video sequences that are almost indiscernible from real video footage. Some of the samples above are practically perfect. In others, it’s clear that we’re looking at AI generating movement, especially the subject’s mouth.

The Albert Einstein speech in the clip above is certainly a highlight for OmniHuman-1. Taylor Swift singing the theme song from the anime Naruto in Japanese in the video below is another example of OmniHuman-1 in action:

OmniHuman-1 can be used to create AI-generated videos showing human subjects (real or fabricated) speaking or singing in all sorts of instances. This opens the service for abuse, as I’m sure some people, including malicious actors, would use the service to impersonate celebrities for scams or misleading purposes.

OmniHuman-1 also works well for animating cartoon and video game characters. This could be a great use for the technology, as it could help creators more accurately animate facial expressions and speech for such characters.

Also interesting is the claim that OmniHuman-1 can generate videos of unlimited length. The examples available range between five and 25 seconds. The memory is apparently a bottleneck, not the AI’s ability to create longer clips.

Business Standard points out that ByteDance’s OmniHuman-1 is an expected development from the Chinese company. ByteDance also unveiled INFP recently, an AI project aimed to animate facial expressions in conversations. ByteDance is also well-known for its CapCut editing app, that was removed from app stores alongside TikTok a few weeks ago.

It’s only natural to see ByteDance expand its AI video generation capabilities and introduce services like OmniHuman-1.

It’s unclear when OmniHuman-1 will be availabel to users, if ever. ByteDance has a website at this link where you can read more details about the AI research project and see more samples.

ByteDance researchers also mention “ethics concerns” in the document, which is great to see. This signals that ByteDance might take a more cautious approach to deploying the product, though I’m just speculating here.

But if OmniHuman-1 is released in the wild too soon, it’ll only be a matter of time before someone creates lifelike videos of real-life celebrities or made-up humans who say (or sing) anything the creator wants them to, in any language. And it won’t always be just for entertainment purposes.

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OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used ChatGPT to train its AI

Chinese startup DeepSeek stunned the world with its sophisticated DeepSeek R1 reasoning model, which is as good as ChatGPT o1. That’s not a surprising achievement; it’s only a matter of time before other AI models can replicate what OpenAI has done in terms of AI reasoning. Also, OpenAI will soon make o3 available, the successor to o1.

What really shocked the markets was DeepSeek’s research, which showed that the company was able to train R1 to achieve the same capabilities at a fraction of the cost of training o1.

Because of US sanctions, DeepSeek didn’t have access to the latest NVIDIA GPUs that AI firms like OpenAI use to train high-end AI models. It turned to software optimizations to compensate for what it lacked in hardware to create an AI model that could match ChatGPT o1.

But it turns out software optimization isn’t everything DeepSeek might have done to train its AI. OpenAI claims it has evidence that DeepSeek distilled ChatGPT to train the DeepSeek AI models.

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If that’s true, the practice violates OpenAI’s terms of service for ChatGPT. Ironically, if OpenAI’s claim is true, it’ll make the company experience what many creators felt when they discovered OpenAI may have trained its ChatGPT models using copyrighted materials without consent.

OpenAI told The Financial Times it found evidence that DeepSeek used the US models to train DeepSeek AI.

OpenAI found evidence of “distillation,” which it believes came from DeepSeek. Distillation is a process where AI firms use an already trained large AI model to train smaller models. The “student” models will match similar results to the “teacher” AI in specific tasks.

Some early DeepSeek testers were surprised to see the AI identify itself as ChatGPT in early responses, which prompted speculation that DeepSeek AI might have been trained with ChatGPT chats.

OpenAI claims that DeepSeek might have distilled ChatGPT make sense, but it’s unclear whether the US AI firm can prove the IP theft beyond doubt. Even if it can provide conclusive evidence that DeepSeek used ChatGPT to train its AIs, there’s probably little OpenAI can do. After all, DeepSeek R1 is already out in the wild.

DeepSeek made its models available open-source, which means anyone can install them on computers. The DeepSeek app is topping the App Store, and it’s available in the Google Play store. Unless DeepSeek is banned in the US, the app won’t go away anytime soon.

The FT says that OpenAI and Microsoft investigated accounts believed to belong to DeepSeeka last year. They were using OpenAI’s API for ChatGPT access. OpenAI blocked access, suspecting they may rely on distillation to train other models.

DeepSeek has not commented on these allegations. The company is seen as a hero in China after the release of DeepSeek R1, which wiped nearly $1 billion from the US market.

On the other hand, it’s not just Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek that might rely on the distillation of ChatGPT and other frontier AIs to train better AI models. The FT notes that it’s common practice for AI labs in China and the US to use outputs from bigger companies.

OpenAI and others have already trained AI using humans to teach the models how to produce responses that sound more conversational. This is an expensive process, so smaller firms will distill established models to train smaller ones. In such a case, a company like DeepSeek would have gotten the human feedback step for free.

I said earlier that DeepSeek’s use of distillation to train R1 is something others could benefit from, Apple included. I wasn’t referring to stealing AI work done by others but to using advanced, proprietary models to train smaller models that Apple might need for its on-device Apple Intelligence approach.

If OpenAI has strong evidence that DeepSeek used ChatGPT to train its AI models, we could be looking at the second good reason to ban DeepSeek in the US and elsewhere. The first is that DeepSeek collects plenty of user data and sends it all to China.

A ban is a process that will take time. And, again, even if all of this is successful, DeepSeek will still have strong AI models on its hands, which it can use to create next-gen AI of its own.

Meanwhile, OpenAI still has to deal with allegations that it used copyrighted content without consent to create ChatGPT.

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Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 surpasses DeepSeek as China’s AI race heats up

In a rare move, Chinese tech company Alibaba released a new version of the Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model during the Lunar New Year. The tech firm claims this update surpasses DeepSeek-V3, which had a meteoric rise in popularity in the past three weeks.

With this release, we’re now seeing that not only are US companies intensifying the AI race against the Chinese, but local competition also wants to stay ahead.

As first reported by Reuters, Alibaba announced that its new AI model outperforms the most recent LLM models available, even though it doesn’t offer ChatGPT Operator-like features. “Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms… almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” posted the company on WeChat.

That said, Alibaba continues to defy other major Chinese players, including DeepSeek, Baidu, and Tencent. Last year, the company slashed its usage prices since the DeepSeek-V2 was not only open-source but also cost around $0.14 per 1 million tokens. Baidu also followed the price cut.

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AI race intensifies in the US

Over here, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, teased several “exciting new features” coming to ChatGPT as DeepSeek’s popularity exploded. Then, the company announced a new ChatGPT Gov tool to strengthen ties with the US government, followed by a post with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella about all the crazy new stuff OpenAI has planned.

This is all due to DeepSeek’s sophisticated R1 reasoning model. While it’s as good as ChatGPT’s o1, what impressed everyone is that training the model costs a fraction of what OpenAI usually spends.

That being said, OpenAI says there is evidence that DeepSeek distilled ChatGPT to train its AI models. If true, the practice violates OpenAI’s terms of service for ChatGPT.

Ironically, if OpenAI’s claim is true, it’ll make the company experience what many creators felt when they discovered OpenAI may have trained its ChatGPT models using copyrighted materials without consent.

BGR will let you know as we learn more about new AI models from China, such as Alibaba, DeepSeek, and others, as well as the latest advancements in the US market.

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