China-based AI company DeepSeek has released the latest version of its reasoning model, R1-0528, boasting technical improvements that bring it closer to the capabilities of Western leaders like OpenAI. Yet the real spotlight has landed not on its performance benchmarks, but on how aggressively it skirts politically sensitive territory.
While the model excels at tasks like mathematics, programming, and factual recall, its responses to questions touching on Chinese state policy or historical controversies have raised alarm. The behavior was documented by a pseudonymous developer known as “xlr8harder,” who has been using a custom-built tool, SpeechMap, to evaluate language models' openness on contentious issues.
In a detailed thread on X, xlr8harder argued that DeepSeek’s newest offering represents a marked regression in free speech. “Deepseek deserves criticism for this release: This model is a big step backward for free speech,” the developer wrote.
“Ameliorating this is that the model is open source with a permissive license, so the community can (and will) address this.”
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