In Beijing on February 26, China's enthusiasm for DeepSeek has reached a new level, expanding beyond to include TVs, refrigerators, and robot vacuum cleaners, as several home appliance brands announce plans to integrate the startup's artificial intelligence models.
DeepSeek, based in Hangzhou, has disrupted the AI sector this year with their advanced language models that compete with Western systems in performance but at a lower cost. This success has generated significant interest in China, with DeepSeek being hailed as evidence that U.S. attempts to limit China's tech progress will not succeed.
Chinese authorities have honored DeepSeek's founder, Liang Wenfeng, and the company is set to release their next-generation model, following the R1 reasoning model, soon according to sources.
In the last two weeks, household appliance companies like Haier, Hisense, and TCL Electronics have joined auto manufacturers and tech giants such as Huawei and Tencent in announcing their intention to incorporate DeepSeek's models into their products.
Many of these home appliances already function as smart devices that respond to voice commands, but DeepSeek's models will provide even greater precision.
According to Liu Xingliang, an industry analyst based in Beijing, a robotic vacuum cleaner could leverage DeepSeek-R1's semantic parsing capabilities to navigate and avoid obstacles more efficiently and adeptly. Liu noted, "The device will be able to understand complex instructions such as 'Gently wax the wooden floor in the master bedroom but avoid the Legos'."