Chinese language startup DeepSeek AI and its open-source language fashions took over the information cycle this week. Apart from being similar 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.
On Monday, Perplexity posted on X that it now hosts DeepSeek R1. The free plan offers customers three Professional-level queries per day, which you may use with R1, however you will want the $20 monthly Professional plan to entry it greater than that.
In one other submit, 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 secure if utilizing the open-source fashions on Perplexity.
“None of your information goes to China,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas reiterated in a LinkedIn submit.
DeepSeek’s AI assistant, powered by each its V3 and R1 fashions, is accessible through browser or app — however these require communication with the corporate’s China-based servers, which creates a safety threat. Customers who obtain R1 and run it regionally on their gadgets will keep away from that problem, however nonetheless run into censorship of sure subjects decided by the Chinese language authorities, because it’s inbuilt by default.
As a part of providing R1, Perplexity claimed it eliminated no less than a number of the censorship constructed into 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, however it refused to reply.
Perplexity help clarified that this was as a result of R1 was set to writing mode, and due to this fact not linked to sources that might assist it present an uncensored reply. Nevertheless, after I then requested R1 whether it is skilled 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 each V3 and R1, equally solely by its Professional tier, which is $15 monthly (discounted from the standard $20) and with none free queries. Along with entry 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 through the platform in 3 ways, all of which use “an unmodified, open supply model of the DeepSeek fashions hosted fully inside the USA to make sure consumer privateness.”
“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 direction of citing these sources, and an inclination to respect these sources whereas producing responses,” McCann continued. “The second approach is for customers to show off entry to public net sources inside their supply controls or by utilizing the fashions as a part of Customized Brokers. This selection 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 boundaries of those fashions as a part of a Customized Agent by including their very own directions, recordsdata, and sources.”
McCann famous that You.com in contrast DeepSeek fashions’ responses primarily based on whether or not it had entry to net sources. “We seen 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 explains. “When our belief layer was enabled, encouraging quotation of public net sources, the fashions’ responses revered these sources, seemingly overriding prior political biases.”
For builders, DeepSeek R1 is now accessible on platforms together with Azure and Github, AWS, and Nvidia,