Chinese language startup DeepSeek AI and its open-source language fashions took over the information cycle this week. Moreover being corresponding to fashions like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s o1, the fashions have raised a number of considerations about information privateness, safety, and Chinese language-government-enforced censorship inside their coaching.
AI search platform Perplexity and AI assistant You.com have discovered a approach round that.
Entry the uncensored mannequin weights
On Tuesday, Perplexity open-sourced the mannequin weights for R1 1776, an uncensored model of R1 that the corporate says “has been post-trained to supply unbiased, correct, and factual info,” in keeping with the announcement. Perplexity notes that its decensoring coaching course of didn’t negatively influence different elements of the mannequin’s efficiency, together with math and reasoning.
You’ll be able to entry this model on HuggingFace or Perplexity’s Sonar API.
The usual (and thus presumably nonetheless censored) model of DeepSeek R1 is on the market on platforms together with Azure and Github, AWS, and Nvidia.
Strive R1 by way of AI platforms
As of final month, Perplexity now hosts DeepSeek R1. The free plan provides customers three Professional-level queries per day, which you could possibly use with R1, however you may want the $20 monthly Professional plan to entry the mannequin greater than that.
DeepSeek R1 is now obtainable on Perplexity to assist deep net analysis. There is a new Professional Search reasoning mode selector, together with OpenAI o1, with clear chain of thought into mannequin’s reasoning. We’re rising the variety of every day makes use of for each free and paid as add extra… pic.twitter.com/KIJWpPPJVN
— Perplexity (@perplexity_ai) January 27, 2025
In one other publish, the corporate confirmed that it hosts DeepSeek “in US/EU information facilities — your information by no means leaves Western servers,” assuring customers that their information can be protected if utilizing the open-source fashions on Perplexity.
“None of your information goes to China,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas reiterated in a LinkedIn publish.
DeepSeek’s AI assistant, powered by each its V3 and R1 fashions, is accessible by way of browser or app — however these companies require communication with the corporate’s China-based servers, which creates a safety threat.
Customers who obtain R1 and run it regionally on their units will keep away from that problem however nonetheless run into censorship of sure subjects decided by the Chinese language authorities, as that function is built-in by default.
As a part of providing R1, Perplexity claimed it eliminated at the very least a number of the censorship inbuilt to the mannequin. Srinivas posted a screenshot on X of question outcomes that acknowledge the president of Taiwan.
To examine, I requested R1 about Tiananmen Sq. utilizing Perplexity, but it surely refused to reply:
Perplexity assist clarified that this problem was as a result of R1 was set to writing mode, and subsequently not linked to sources that might assist it present an uncensored reply. Nevertheless, once I then requested R1 whether it is educated to not reply sure questions decided by the Chinese language authorities, it responded that it is designed to “concentrate on factual info” and “keep away from political commentary,” and that its coaching “emphasizes neutrality in world affairs” and “cultural sensitivity.”
You.com affords V3 and R1, equally solely by means of its Professional tier, which is $15 monthly (discounted from the standard $20) with none free queries. Along with accessing to all of the fashions You.com affords, the Professional plan comes with file uploads of as much as 25MB per question, a 64k most context window, and entry to analysis and customized brokers.
Bryan McCann, You.com cofounder and CTO, defined in an e mail to ZDNET that customers can entry R1 and V3 by way of the platform in 3 ways, all of which use “an unmodified, open-source model of the DeepSeek fashions hosted fully inside the USA to make sure person privateness.”
McCann continued: “The primary, default approach is to make use of these fashions inside the context of our proprietary belief layer. This offers the fashions entry to public net sources, a bias in the direction of citing these sources, and an inclination to respect these sources whereas producing responses.
“The second approach is for customers to show off entry to public net sources inside their supply controls or through the use of the fashions as a part of Customized Brokers. This feature permits customers to discover the fashions’ distinctive capabilities and conduct when not grounded within the public net. The third approach is for customers to check the bounds of those fashions as a part of a Customized Agent by including their very own directions, information, and sources.”
McCann famous that You.com in contrast DeepSeek fashions’ responses based mostly on whether or not it had entry to net sources.
“We observed that the fashions’ responses differed on a number of political subjects, generally refusing to reply on sure points when public net sources weren’t included,” he defined.
“When our belief layer was enabled, encouraging quotation of public net sources, the fashions’ responses revered these sources, seemingly overriding prior political biases.”