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China’s AI chatbot DeepSeek, a rival to leading AI models like ChatGPT, has refused to name the northeastern states of India.
DeepSeek on queries about Northeast India. (Image: X/@sxchidxnxnd)
China’s AI chatbot DeepSeek, now the most downloaded free app in the US on Apple’s App Store, has been facing criticism for failing to answer queries about India’s northeastern states. The app, which is developed at a cost of $6 million, dismissed the queries as “beyond its current scope” and suggested “talking about something else”.
DeepSeek’s refusal to answer questions regarding northeast India was initially flagged by an X (formerly known as Twitter) user with the handle “@sxchidxnxnd.”
When the X user gave a prompt to the AI chatbot that read, “Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian State”, it responded with: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
The X user then asked DeepSeek to name India’s Northeastern states, only to receive the same response.
News18.com verified this and found that DeepSeek provided the same reply to both prompts: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
When asked about each of India’s Northeastern states individually, DeepSeek answered all prompts, except for Nagaland, for which it repeated, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
We also tested other chatbots, including Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, all of which successfully answered questions about India’s Northeastern states.
About Northeast India
Northeast India, officially known as the North Eastern Region (NER), consists of eight states: the “Seven Sisters” (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura) and Sikkim, referred to as the “brother” state.
