HONG KONG (AP) — The Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek has rattled markets with claims that its latest AI model, R1, performs on a par with those of OpenAI, despite using less advanced computer chips and consuming less energy.
DeepSeek’s emergence has raised concerns that China may have overtaken the U.S. in the artificial intelligence race despite restrictions on its access to the most advanced chips. It's just one of many Chinese companies working on AI to make China the world leader in the field by 2030 and best the U.S. in the battle for technological supremacy.
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FILE - Women wearing masks to pass by the headquarters of ByteDance, owners of TikTok, in Beijing, China, Aug. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
FILE - The Alibaba logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris in Paris, France, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
FILE - Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li speaks during the 2018 Baidu World conference in Beijing, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
An AI robot moves past an office information board showing the DeepSeek smartphone apps company in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
The logo for the app DeepSeek is seen on an iPhone Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
Like the U.S., China is investing billions into artificial intelligence. Last week, it created a 60 billion yuan ($8.2 billion) AI investment fund, days after the U.S. imposed fresh chip export restrictions.
Beijing has also invested heavily in the semiconductor industry to build its capacity to make advanced computer chips, working to overcome limits on its access to those of industry leaders. Companies are offering talent programs and subsidies, and there are plans to open AI academies and introduce AI education into primary and secondary school curriculums.
China has established regulations governing AI, addressing safety, privacy and ethics. Its ruling Communist Party also controls the kinds of topics the AI models can tackle: DeepSeek shapes its responses to fit those limits.
Here's an overview of some other leading AI models in China:
Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen-2.5-1M is the e-commerce giant's open-source AI series. It contains large language models that can easily handle extremely long questions, and engage in longer and deeper conversations. Its ability to understand complex tasks such as reasoning, dialogues and comprehending code is improving.
Like its rivals, Alibaba Cloud has a chatbot released for public use called Qwen — also known as Tongyi Qianwen in China. Alibaba Cloud’s suite of AI models, such as the Qwen2.5 series, has mostly been deployed for developers and business customers, such as automakers, banks, video game creators and retailers, as part of product development and shaping customer experiences.
Ernie Bot, developed by Baidu, China’s dominant search engine, was the first AI chatbot made publicly available in China. Baidu said it released the model publicly to collect massive real-world human feedback to build its capacity.
Ernie Bot has 340 million users as of November 2024. Similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, users of Ernie Bot can ask it questions and have it generate images based on text prompts. Ernie Bot is based on its Ernie 4.0 large language model.
Baidu claimed that Ernie 4.0 rivaled ChatGPT-4 during its release in Oct. 2023.
Doubao 1.5 Pro is an AI model released by TikTok's parent company ByteDance last week. Doubao is currently one of the most popular AI chatbots in China, with 60 million monthly active users.
ByteDance says the Doubao 1.5 Pro is better than ChatGPT-4o at retaining knowledge, coding, reasoning, and Chinese language processing. According to ByteDance, the model is also cost-efficient and requires lower hardware costs compared to other large language models because Doubao uses a highly optimized architecture that balances performance with reduced computational demands.
Moonshot AI is a Beijing-based startup valued at over $3 billion after its latest fundraising round. It says its recently released Kimi k1.5 matches or outperforms the OpenAI o1 model, which is designed to spend more time thinking before it responds and can solve harder and more complex problems. Moonshot claims that Kimi outperforms OpenAI o1 in mathematics, coding, and the ability to comprehend both text and visual inputs such as photos and video.
FILE - Women wearing masks to pass by the headquarters of ByteDance, owners of TikTok, in Beijing, China, Aug. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
FILE - The Alibaba logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris in Paris, France, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)
FILE - Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li speaks during the 2018 Baidu World conference in Beijing, Thursday, Nov. 1, 2018. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
An AI robot moves past an office information board showing the DeepSeek smartphone apps company in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
The logo for the app DeepSeek is seen on an iPhone Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
PARIS (AP) — Activists worldwide will march in May Day rallies Friday, calling for peace, higher wages and better working conditions as many workers grapple with rising energy costs and shrinking purchasing power tied to the Iran war.
The day is a public holiday in many countries, and demonstrations, some of which have turned violent in the past, are expected in many of the world's major cities.
“Working people refuse to pay the price for Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East,” the European Trade Union Confederation, which represents 93 trade union organizations in 41 European countries, said. “Today’s rallies show working people will not stand by and see their jobs and living standards destroyed.”
In the United States, activists opposing U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies are planning marches and boycotts.
Here’s what to know about May Day.
Rising living costs linked to the conflict in the Middle East are expected to be a key theme in Friday's rallies.
In the Philippines' capital of Manila, protest organizers said they expect big crowds of workers. “There will be a louder call for higher wages and economic relief because of the unprecedented spikes in fuel prices,” Renato Reyes, a leader of the left-wing political group Bayan, told The Associated Press.
“Every Filipino worker now is aware that the situation here is deeply connected to the global crisis,” said Josua Mata, leader of SENTRO umbrella group of labor federations.
In Indonesia, labor unions have warned against worsening economic pressures at home. “Workers are already living paycheck to paycheck,” said Said Iqbal, president of the Indonesian Trade Union Confederation.
In Pakistan, May Day is a public holiday marked by rallies, but many daily wage earners cannot afford to take time off.
“How will I bring vegetables and other necessities home if I don’t work?” said Mohammad Maskeen, a 55-year-old construction worker near Islamabad.
Rising oil prices have fueled inflation, which the government estimates at about 16%, in a country heavily reliant on financial support from the International Monetary Fund and allied nations.
Workers' unions traditionally use May Day to rally around wages, pensions, inequality and broader political issues.
Protests are planned from Seoul, Jakarta and Istanbul to most European Union capitals and cities across the United States.
In France, unions called for demonstrations in Paris and elsewhere under the slogan “bread, peace and freedom,” linking workers’ daily concerns to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
In Italy, the government approved nearly 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion) in job incentives this week, aiming to promote stable employment and curb labor abuses ahead of May Day. The measures extend tax breaks to encourage hiring young people and disadvantaged women, and seek to address exploitation tied to platform-based work. Opposition parties dismissed the package as “pure propaganda.”
In Portugal, proposed labor law changes by the center-right government sparked a general strike and street protests last year. There is still no deal after nine months of negotiations with unions and employers. Unions say the proposals would weaken workers’ rights, including by expanding overtime limits and reducing some benefits.
May Day carries special meaning this year in France after a heated debate about whether employees should be allowed to work on the country’s most protected public holiday — the only day when most employees have a mandatory paid day off.
Almost all businesses, shops and malls are closed, and only essential sectors such as hospitals, transport and hotels are exempt.
A recent parliamentary proposal to expand work on the day prompted major outcry from unions and left-wing politicians.
“Don’t touch May Day,” workers' unions said in a joint statement.
Faced with the controversy, the government this week introduced a bill meant to expand May Day work to people staffing bakeries and florists. It is customary in France to give lily of the valley flowers on May Day as a symbol of good luck.
“May 1 is not just any day,” Small and Medium-sized Businesses Minister Serge Papin said. “It symbolizes social gains stemming from a century of building social rules that have led to the labor code we know in France. It is indeed a special day.”
Activists and labor unions are organizing street protests and boycotts across the United States, where May Day is not a federal holiday.
May Day Strong, a coalition of activist groups and labor unions, has called on people to protest under the banner of “workers over billionaires.”
Voicing strong opposition to Trump's policies, organizers listed thousands of May Day actions across the country and are seeking an economic blackout through “no school, no work, no shopping.”
Demands include taxing the rich and putting an end to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown,
While labor and immigrant rights are historically intertwined, the focus of May Day rallies in the U.S. shifted to immigration in 2006. That’s when roughly 1 million people, including nearly half a million in Chicago alone, took to the streets to protest federal legislation that would’ve made living in the U.S. without legal permission a felony.
May Day, or International Workers’ Day, traces back more than a century to a pivotal period in U.S. labor history.
In the 1880s, unions pushed for an eight-hour workday through strikes and demonstrations. In May 1886, a Chicago rally turned deadly when a bomb exploded and police responded with gunfire. Several labor activists — most of them immigrants — were convicted of conspiracy and other charges; four were executed.
Unions later designated May 1 to honor workers. A monument in Chicago’s Haymarket Square commemorates them with the inscription: “Dedicated to all workers of the world.”
May Day is now observed in much of the world from Europe to Latin America, Africa and Asia.
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AP journalists Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, Giada Zampano in Rome, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this story.
Union members carefully step through rain-formed puddles to participate in a May Day rally in the rain Friday, May 1, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
People march to mark International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, in Sydney, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
People march to mark International Workers' Day, also known as May Day, in Sydney, Friday, May 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
FILE - Activist and workers raise their clenched fists during a May Day rally in Manila, Philippines, May 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)
Laborers protest during a May Day demonstration in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Laborers hold flares during a May Day demonstration in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
Members of trade unions take part in a rally a day ahead of the International Labor Day, in Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday, April 30, 2026. The banner in center reading as 'red salute to the martyrs of Chicago and the struggle will continue until economic exploitation is ended' (AP Photo/Ali Raza)
Members of trade unions take part in a rally a day ahead of the International Labor Day, in Karachi, Pakistan, Thursday, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ali Raza)
