As US and China dominate AI race, where is Europe's answer to DeepSeek and ChatGPT?

Yahoo

07-02-2025

Europe has trailed the US and China in the AI race, and the rise of DeepSeek has only widened the gap, but open-source projects and regulatory efforts could help the continent carve its own path in artificial intelligence, according to tech experts.
Hangzhou-based start-up DeepSeek made headlines last month with two large language models - V3 and R1 - that have emerged as challengers to OpenAI's ChatGPT while requiring only a fraction of the cost and computing power to build.
This has put China in a strong position in its AI rivalry with the United States and fuelled hopes for more DeepSeek-style disrupters.
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But European tech firms have not yet produced an AI contender on the level of ChatGPT or DeepSeek.
Neil Lawrence, a senior AI fellow at the London-based Alan Turing Institute, noted that Britain was "a long way behind" the US and China in both the development and deployment of the technology.
"Similar applies to most of Europe, but there are encouraging signs in Germany, France, Finland and Switzerland," Lawrence said.
DeepSeek's success stands in stark contrast to the French government-backed chatbot Lucie, which was deactivated on January 25 after it gave nonsensical answers to simple maths problems and even suggested a user consume "cow's eggs".
Lucie was developed as part of the €54 billion (US$56.2 billion) France 2030 investment programme. It aimed to challenge the dominance of the English language in AI and offer an alternative to models such as ChatGPT. However, its underwhelming performance sparked criticism and online ridicule.
Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, who heads the science, technology and innovation programme at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, said it would be difficult for Europe to compete with key players such as China and the US.
"Maybe it's not realistic to think that you will compete at that global cutting edge of general intelligence, but there's a lot of value in being a close follower and working on some of the implementation and focusing on some of the specific areas," he said.
Despite the anxiety DeepSeek has sparked in Europe, open-source models have offered a glimmer of hope.
On January 30, Paris-based start-up Mistral AI unveiled a new open-source language model called Mistral Small 3.
The company said Mistral Small 3 rivalled the performance of models three times its size while significantly cutting computing costs, positioning it as an "excellent open replacement" for GPT-4o mini - OpenAI's scaled down, cheaper model - and a complement to DeepSeek.
On Monday, an alliance of 20 European research institutions announced OpenEuroLLM, an ambitious AI initiative aimed at developing a European version of DeepSeek.
Backed by the European Commission, the open-source project has a budget of €52 million and could be the commission's biggest AI venture, according to tech news site The Next Web.
A statement from OpenEuroLLM said the project aimed to fortify "Europe's competitiveness and digital sovereignty".
Lawrence said that while Britain's current AI output was "flimsy", DeepSeek's success could help encourage change.
"The UK's falter has mainly been due to poor and panicky policy advice, so we can hope it will be quickly reversed because the foundations are still strong," he said.
Anthony Cohn, professor of automated reasoning at the University of Leeds, said there was some evidence that foundation model performance was plateauing as the release of GPT-5, OpenAI's next large AI model, had been delayed. Foundation models are AI models trained on vast data sets that can be applied to a wide range of tasks.
"Assuming LLM [large language model] development is plateauing, then that gives a chance for others to catch up, especially since Western nations will have access to the latest Nvidia [chips] currently banned for export to China," Cohn said.
"Moreover, if the development costs quoted by DeepSeek are real, then this certainly puts the development of similar models within reach of many nations."
Cui Hongjian, head of European Union studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said Europe also aimed to maximise its advantages in regulation to carve out a different path to AI development.
Last year, EU policymakers passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, marking one of the world's first comprehensive efforts to regulate the rapidly evolving technology.
On Saturday, Britain became the first country to criminalise AI tools used to create sexually abusive images.
"However, without the support of actual technological and industrial development, I believe these regulations cannot stand firm," Cui said.
Cui cautioned that excessive regulation might stifle innovation, adding that there were signs that AI had become "politicised" in some European countries.
"The impact of DeepSeek will continue to unfold, influencing Europe's ongoing discussions on how to enhance its competitiveness. The focus will likely shift towards creating regulations that foster innovation rather than hinder it," he said.
"DeepSeek, as it may represent, continues to uphold a globalised and open landscape, which I believe aligns more closely with Europe's interests."
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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