‘Large-Scale Malicious Attack’: DeepSeek Degrades Service After Unprecedented Traffic

Last Updated:January 27, 2025, 22:41 IST

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek on Monday said that they degraded their service for a brief period owing to a "large-scale malicious attack."

Chinese AI DeepSeek | Representative Image

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek on Monday said that they degraded their service for a brief period owing to a “large-scale malicious attack."

The Chinese startup added they have temporarily limited registrations, only allowing users who have a mainland China mobile phone number to register. Although existing users will be able to log in as usual.

The startup earlier in the day was also hit by outages on its website after its AI assistant became the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the United States.

The Chinese artificial intelligence startup created a lot of buzz worldwide in recent weeks as a fast-growing rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and other leading AI tools.

DeepSeek emerged as a key player in the AI market in April 2023 from a Chinese hedge fund’s AI research team, aiming to develop large language models and pursue artificial general intelligence (AGI), which seeks to surpass human intellect across various tasks.

Last week, the startup gained significant attention after releasing R1, its open-source reasoning model designed to rival OpenAI’s o1.

R1 quickly rose to prominence on app stores and industry leaderboards, earning widespread praise for its performance and reasoning capabilities, making it a standout in the competitive AI landscape.

Also Read: China’s DeepSeek AI Model Rivals OpenAI, Already Ahead Of ChatGPT For Users

The creators of DeepSeek say its AI chatbot leads the charts among the other AI models, but the company also seems to have developed its AI armoury with far less money than the likes of OpenAI and Google.

The creators of DeepSeek have even cited this in a paper, saying they have spent less than $6 million and used the Nvidia H800 chips for training the AI model.

DeepSeek isn’t the first AI model to gain attention outside its region, but it’s the first to make a significant impact in the US, drawing interest from tech experts and showcasing the rapid evolution of AI.

This marks a pivotal moment in AI development, sparking global discussions that are likely to continue for a long time.

China

News tech ‘Large-Scale Malicious Attack’: DeepSeek Degrades Service After Unprecedented Traffic