OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has replied to the growing hype surrounding Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which recently made waves in the AI community by releasing its open-source model, DeepSeek R1.
Altman acknowledged the model's capabilities, calling it impressive and noteworthy for its affordability.
Despite acknowledging DeepSeek's accomplishment, Altman emphasized that OpenAI remains confident in its position as a leader in AI development. "We will obviously deliver much better models, and also, it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor!" he wrote on X.
He also hinted that OpenAI will soon pull up its releases while remaining focused on its long-term vision.
DeepSeek's competitive pricing has drawn much interest. It offers powerful reasoning and coding capabilities for just a fraction of the price of OpenAI.
The approach has also gained widespread adoption, overtaking ChatGPT in Apple's App Store rankings in the US and making gains in India. DeepSeek, backed by Tencent, is positioning itself as a low-cost alternative to industry leaders like OpenAI, Google, DeepMind, and Anthropic.
Altman also emphasized that scaling computing power to drive AI progress is essential for OpenAI's strategy. "More compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission," he stated, reinforcing the company's belief that AI advancements require massive infrastructure investments.
He concluded by reaffirming OpenAI's commitment to developing AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), which aims to outperform humans in most tasks. According to Altman, "The world is going to want to use a lot of AI and really be quite amazed by the next-gen models coming. "
With OpenAI gearing up for major releases and DeepSeek gaining traction, the AI race is heating up, making way for the next generation of innovative advancements.