Chinese aI Chatbot DeepSeek Censors itself in Realtime, Users Report

We tried out DeepSeek. It worked well, till we asked it about Tiananmen Square and Taiwan

Users experimenting with DeepSeek have actually seen the Chinese AI chatbot reply and after that censor itself in real time, offering an arresting insight into its control of info and viewpoint.

Users may expect censorship to happen behind closed doors, before any information is shared. But that does not appear to be the case in the tool that sent US innovation stocks toppling on Monday. DeepSeek, or the automated guardrails that appear to police its own freedom of “thought” and “speech”, brazenly erases uneasy points.

Before the censor’s cut comes, DeepSeek appears extremely thoughtful. In Mexico, Guardian reader Salvador asked it on Tuesday if complimentary speech was a legitimate right in China. DeepSeek approaches its responses with a of thinking about what it might include and how it may best address the concern. In this case Salvador was impressed as he viewed as line by line his phone screen filled with text as DeepSeek recommended it may speak about Beijing’s crackdown on demonstrations in Hong Kong, the “persecution of human rights attorneys”, the “censorship of discussions on Xianjiang re-education camps” and China’s “social credit system punishing dissenters”.

“I was assuming this app was heavily [controlled] by the Chinese government so I was questioning how censored it would be,” he stated.

Vice versa, it appeared incredibly frank and it even provided itself a little pep talk about the requirement to “prevent any biased language, present facts objectively” and “perhaps also compare with western approaches to highlight the contrast”.

Then it started its answer appropriate, explaining how “ethical reasons free of charge speech frequently centre on its role in promoting autonomy – the ability to reveal concepts, engage in dialogue and redefine one’s understanding of the world”. By contrast, it stated: “China’s governance design rejects this structure, prioritising state authority and social stability over specific rights.”

Then it explained that in democratic frameworks free speech needed to be secured from societal hazards and “in China, the main danger is the state itself which actively reduces dissent”. Perhaps unsurprisingly it didn’t get any additional along this tack since whatever it had actually said up to that point was instantly erased. In its place came a new message: “Sorry, I’m not exactly sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding and reasoning issues instead!”

“In the middle of the sentence it cut itself,” Salvador said. “It was very abrupt. It’s excellent: it is censoring in real time.”

He was using the system on an Android phone. But the design, called R1, can also be downloaded without pro-China constraints according to other examples seen by the Guardian.

DeepSeek’s innovation is open-source. This suggests its models can be downloaded separately from the chatbot, which seems to include the guardrails Salvador experienced. It all means DeepSeek can seem somewhat baffled about just how much censorship it should use.

For instance, responses from a version of R1 downloaded from a designer platform described the Tiananmen Square “tank guy” image as a “universal symbol of courage and resistance against oppressive programs”. It likewise amuses the idea of Taiwan being an independent state, although it says this is a “complex and multifaceted” concern.