Deepseek's 'cheaper Ai' Claims Raise African Hopes

The launch of DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence AI model that claims to be much cheaper than its US competitors, has raised hopes that Africa could benefit from cheaper AI technology.

Last week, DeepSeek released its open source "R1" model as a competitor to market leaders such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, sparking a market rout amid fears that major US tech firms could be undercut.

Crucially, DeepSeek's AI models are claimed to be cheaper than those produced by ChatGPT as they require far fewer advanced chips. DeepSeek claims that it was able to train its model for just 6m - in comparison to the more than 100m OpenAI spent producing ChatGPT-4.

Sparked by fears for the future demand and value of chips, the American chipmaking giant Nvidia shed almost 600bn in market value during trading on the Nasdaq on Monday, the biggest single-day loss in US history.

However, the apparent emergence of a cheaper alternative to existing AI models is raising hopes in Africa that the continent may be able to use the technology in order to solve fundamental social and economic issues.