Launch of free and open-source Janus model comes after Chinese startup’s chatbot caused US tech stocks to collapse. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has launched a “revolutionary” new image generator that it claims can outperform the best models built by US-based rivals at a fraction of the price.
The launch of DeepSeek’s Janus-Pro comes just days after its R1 chatbot tool caused the stock of American tech giants to collapse amid fears that its low-cost and open-source models would upend their dominance. DeepSeek’s Janus-Pro is free-to-use without restriction, unlike image generators built by US rivals like OpenAI and Stability AI. It also marks a breakthrough in the way such models are trained and developed, with one of its generative AI models costing less than $6 million to build – compared to the billions it cost for the likes of ChatGPT.
“It is freaking amazing... This model generates images and beats OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion across multiple benchmarks,” said internet entrepreneur Brian Roemmele. “It can not be stressed enough just how massive the new DeepSeek Janus-Pro 7B model is to the entire ecosystem of AI and the world. It is fully free and the entire project is open source. It is a new game.”.
DeepSeek describes its latest open-source AI model as “revolutionary”, offering developers and researchers unprecedented access to cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies through free-to-use platforms like GitHub and Hugging Face. “Its combination of advanced capabilities, open-source accessibility, and impressive performance benchmarks positions it as a significant player in the evolution of artificial intelligence technology.”.
