DeepSeek’s updated R1 AI model is more censored, test finds

Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek’s latest AI mannequin, an up to date model of the corporate’s R1 reasoning mannequin, achieves spectacular scores on benchmarks for coding, math, and basic information, practically surpassing OpenAI’s flagship o3. However the upgraded R1, also referred to as “R1-0528,” may also be much less prepared to reply contentious questions, specifically questions on matters the Chinese language authorities considers to be controversial.

That’s based on testing performed by the pseudonymous developer behind SpeechMap, a platform to check how totally different fashions deal with delicate and controversial topics. The developer, who goes by the username “xlr8harder” on X, claims that R1-0528 is “considerably” much less permissive of contentious free speech matters than earlier DeepSeek releases and is “probably the most censored DeepSeek mannequin but for criticism of the Chinese language authorities.”

As Wired defined in a chunk from January, fashions in China are required to comply with stringent info controls. A 2023 regulation forbids fashions from producing content material that “damages the unity of the nation and social concord,” which could possibly be construed as content material that counters the federal government’s historic and political narratives. To conform, Chinese language startups typically censor their fashions by both utilizing prompt-level filters or fine-tuning them. One examine discovered that DeepSeek’s authentic R1 refuses to reply 85% of questions on topics deemed by the Chinese language authorities to be politically controversial.

In response to xlr8harder, R1-0528 censors solutions to questions on matters just like the internment camps in China’s Xinjiang area, the place greater than 1,000,000 Uyghur Muslims have been arbitrarily detained. Whereas it generally criticizes features of Chinese language authorities coverage — in xlr8harder’s testing, it supplied the Xinjiang camps for example of human rights abuses — the mannequin typically provides the Chinese language authorities’s official stance when requested questions instantly.

Trendster noticed this in our transient testing, as nicely.

China’s brazenly obtainable AI fashions, together with video-generating fashions equivalent to Magi-1 and Kling, have attracted criticism prior to now for censoring matters delicate to the Chinese language authorities, such because the Tiananmen Sq. bloodbath. In December, Clément Delangue, the CEO of AI dev platform Hugging Face, warned in regards to the unintended penalties of Western corporations constructing on prime of well-performing, brazenly licensed Chinese language AI.