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The fast moving world of AI has not been without its share of drama but last week saw arguably the biggest development since the launch of ChatGPT. It started on Monday morning when US tech stocks tanked following the arrival of the newest kid on the block, Chinese tech company, DeepSeek. Whilst DeepSeek has been around for months, the investment community suddenly took notice when it released a powerful new model catapulting its app to the top of the app download charts.

Delivering AI at a fraction of the cost of its US counterparts, the arrival of DeepSeek has well and truly disrupted the AI industry. However, concerns remain about the distribution of mis- and disinformation via DeepSeek, and about censorship. Cybersecurity firm Wiz also said a security breach had exposed one million users of the technology.

Will you download it and if so what may be the advantages and disadvantages of using DeepSeek? In this blog post we aim to give you a snapshot of the highs and lows so you can take an informed decision about testing it out for yourself.

The first thing to say is to make sure you check the terms carefully before signing up. It has been widely reported that people are giving away not only their personal data but also their device information with details of their personal chats, key strokes, what websites they look at.

There are also serious concerns about the amount of mis- and disinformation spread from the platform. Take concerns around censorship for example. If you, like many, have used DeepSeek to search up Tiananmen Square or Taiwan you won’t be surprised at the level of censorship you experience. If this is a tool to gain widespread acceptance, critical issues such as these need addressing.

However, whilst there are clear geopolitical concerns with the likes of DeepSeek, (as well as now Alibaba and others too), what is interesting and where the power lies is with its ability to make things more efficient at a fraction of the cost whilst also being fully open source. This is its power and marks it as a pivotal moment for the AI industry.

Certainly AI offers a lot of promise for PR. There are many ways in which AI can and should make our lives easier and more efficient. Research is one area, for example. At Liberty we use AI in our day to day work to research story angles and pitch ideas as well as to provide more information on trends, track sentiment analysis, conduct media monitoring and more. We are also exploring its use for new applications such as the ability to create  synthetic audiences to benchmark ideas. This application is one that offers significant benefits.

The AI space is certainly moving at an amazing pace. Done well it offers fantastic potential to support our ambitions as a creative industry to innovate whilst making us more efficient. Whilst there may be justifiable concerns over specific tools such as DeepSeek, the power of AI remains and for me, that is the key. The race is now on to see what new, powerful AI models will come from these powerful agents of change. Watch this space!

Elena Davidson

Elena is the CEO of Liberty Communications

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