SEOUL – DeepSeek, a Chinese generative AI application, has made a significant impact on the South Korean market, achieving over 1.2 million weekly users. This surge in popularity highlights the app's competitive performance and affordability, posing a challenge to established players like ChatGPT.

According to data released on February 4th by Wiseapp·Retail, a mobile app and retail analysis service, DeepSeek's AI Assistant app ranked second in the "Most Used Generative AI Apps in South Korea" for the fourth week of January. ChatGPT led the pack with 4.93 million weekly users, followed by DeepSeek with 1.21 million, Lutan with 1.07 million, A. with 550,000, Perplexity with 360,000, Microsoft Copilot with 170,000, and Claude with 70,000.

DeepSeek's AI model R1, released last month, has garnered attention for its impressive performance. In certain tests, it even outperformed OpenAI's o1 model, launched in September 2023, causing ripples throughout the global AI community.

The AI Assistant app's success extends beyond South Korea. On January 26th, it topped the US Apple App Store's free app download chart, surpassing ChatGPT. It has maintained its leading position since then and has also held the top spot on Google Play since January 28th.

Sensor Tower, a mobile data analytics firm, reported that DeepSeek AI Assistant has been downloaded over 16 million times in the 18 days since its launch, dwarfing ChatGPT's 9 million downloads during the same period.

Despite its rapid growth, DeepSeek faces concerns regarding data security. Several companies and government agencies worldwide have begun blocking access to the app or scrutinizing its privacy policies due to potential information leakage risks.