China's DeepSeek closes in on US rival OpenAI, surpasses Alibaba with upgraded model
Chinese
artificial intelligence (AI) start-up
DeepSeek said R1-0528, the first significant upgrade to its R1 reasoning model that debuted in January, matched the performance of top global competitors, including OpenAI and Google.
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In a statement released late on Thursday, DeepSeek highlighted improvements in the new model's reasoning and creative writing capabilities, making it more adept at crafting argumentative essays, fiction and prose in styles that closely mimic human authors. Coding capabilities have also been enhanced.
The company said the latest version achieved a 50 per cent reduction in 'hallucinations' – instances where AI generates misleading information with little factual basis.
These upgrades were achieved by investing additional computing resources in the post-training stage, when developers make final adjustments and enhancements to the model after the main training process, the company said. Post-training usually focuses on boosting efficiency and enhancing content safety and accuracy.
'The updated R1 model excelled among domestic AI models in a range of benchmark tests, including maths, coding and general logic, and matched up to global top models such as [OpenAI's] O3 and [Google's] Gemini2.5-Pro,' DeepSeek said.
Benchmark results cited by DeepSeek shows that R1-0528 outperforms Alibaba's Qwen3 AI model. Photo: Shutterstock
The update comes after the original R1 model was
dethroned in late April by Alibaba Group Holding's flagship model, Qwen3, in the LiveBench rankings for leading open-source AI systems. The shift underscores the heated competition among Chinese tech players in advancing AI capabilities.
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