Author: Wu Yu, Jinshi Data
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday the sudden rise of Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek "should be a wake-up call for American technology companies" and said it was a good thing that Chinese companies were developing cheaper and more efficient AI models.
Trump said he still expected U.S. tech companies to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, but he acknowledged the challenge posed by DeepSeek, a low-cost AI assistant that surged to No. 1 on Apple's App Store over the weekend.
“The release of DeepSeek AI by a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industry that we need to focus on competition,” he said during a trip to Florida.
DeepSeek has caused panic in the U.S. tech industry and stock market. According to the little-known Chinese startup behind DeepSeek, it has performed well in tests compared with competing models from Meta and OpenAI, and it cost much less to develop.
Trump said he viewed the low-cost model as a “very positive development” for the AI industry overall because “instead of spending billions and billions, you can spend less (resources) and hopefully come to the same solution.”
DeepSeek is the latest in a series of Chinese apps that have surged in popularity in the U.S. in recent weeks. As TikTok was on the brink of being banned, Americans turned to Chinese apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 as alternatives to TikTok. TikTok eventually shut down its U.S. service less than a day later and relaunched for existing users, but it is still not available for download from the Apple and Google app stores.
Last week, Trump signed an executive order rolling back certain Biden administration regulations on artificial intelligence development that he said were hampering the industry.
Still, it’s unclear what new AI policies, if any, the Trump administration or Congress might adopt in response to DeepSeek’s rise.
Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said on Monday he would like to see the U.S. take action to curb DeepSeek's development.
DeepSeek's developers said they built the app despite current U.S. controls on the export of high-performance semiconductors, sparking a lively online debate on Monday about the effects of hardware restrictions and their future.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., defended existing export controls related to advanced chip technology and said more regulation may be needed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called DeepSeek "a serious threat."
David Sacks, the White House director of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, said in an article on X that DeepSeek's success "shows that the AI race is going to be fierce." He also said that former President Biden's previous executive order on the issue "hindered" American AI companies.
“I have confidence in America, but we cannot be complacent,” he wrote.
