Behold, China's 'Great Wall Of... Tokens!'

The debate about proprietary AI models versus open-source models has gone from “only” to “both” to – perhaps – “either/or”.

Users have roughly two million AI models to choose from, and since the “DeepSeek moment” in January last year, Chinese open-source models have been catching up with their proprietary US counterparts, with adequate models trained on lagging-edge chips for a fraction of the price.