"Both ByteDance and DeepSeek have AI apps with over 140 million monthly users. But their latest announcements represent two diverging trends in China's AI industry. While some companies are still competing with their Western counterparts to build ever more capable models, others have quietly withdrawn from that game and are focusing on how they can integrate their AI tools into people's everyday lives."
"Instead, DeepSeek released V3.2 and V3.2-Speciale, which are better-optimized versions of its previous model V3.2-Exp, released in September. Still, V3.2 caused a stir in the AI industry because DeepSeek claims it can solve the type of advanced math questions asked at the International Mathematical Olympiad, and its performance on other coding and reasoning tasks is supposedly on par with or above GPT 5 and Gemini 3."
DeepSeek and ByteDance are pursuing contrasting AI strategies in China. DeepSeek continues to release open-weight models for public tinkering, recently launching V3.2 and V3.2-Speciale as optimized iterations of earlier versions and claiming strong performance on advanced math, coding, and reasoning benchmarks. ByteDance is embedding its chatbot Doubao into smartphone operating systems to enable cross-app access and agentic tasks, aiming for deep everyday integration. Both companies already command large user bases above 140 million monthly users. The industry is splitting between firms chasing frontier model capabilities and firms prioritizing product integration into daily life.
Read at WIRED
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