Social media exploded in a celebration after the news that a Chinese start-up had made an artificial intelligence tool that was more efficient than any in the United States.

What this means is that if you ask it some straightforward questions like “what happened on June 4, 1989 at Tiananmen Square?”, you’ll see DeepSeek start to answer it, but promptly delete everything with the following swift response: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”