Initially, people had high hopes for DeepSeek . As an AI chatbot marketed as a strong competitor to ChatGPT , it promised intelligent capabilities and conversational experiences. However, after using it for a while, many found themselves increasingly frustrated with its limitations.
Disappointment with DeepSeek
DeepSeek server unavailable
One of the biggest issues with DeepSeek is server reliability. You often find yourself wasting a lot of time waiting for a response. These long waits often result in DeepSeek telling you that their servers are busy and you should try again later. While it takes time to scale something that has exploded in popularity, that doesn’t change the fact that their service is down at various times of the day.
When you do have access to DeepSeek, the conversations also often feel stale. While they can generate text responses and communicate effectively, they often feel robotic and emotionless. Chatbots also struggle to maintain context in long conversations. This makes it difficult for users to have a fluid and engaging discussion, especially when compared to ChatGPT’s ability to provide nuanced and contextually aware responses.
DeepSeek is dedicated to text extraction only
Another major disappointment is the file upload limitations. While DeepSeek allows users to upload files, its functionality is limited to text extraction. It does not support image, audio, and other file processing, which are common in many AI chatbots. Since image and audio uploads are actually useful features, this limitation is hard to ignore.
Finally, the fact that DeepSeek doesn’t have a live chat feature on its smartphone app is enough to make you uninstall it immediately. Live chat makes it convenient to use AI chatbots on your phone. And with Gemini , ChatGPT, and Perplexity all having this feature, there’s no reason to use DeepSeek on your phone.
Why is ChatGPT better?
While there are still practical reasons to continue using DeepSeek, many people still return to ChatGPT because they still find it to be the best AI chatbot in a number of key areas.
1. Reliability and Accessibility
ChatGPT is much more stable than DeepSeek. Even during peak usage times, there are rarely server outages that prevent you from accessing their service. Unlike DeepSeek, OpenAI had a head start and was able to invest in infrastructure, ensuring a reliable and smooth experience.
2. Engaging and contextually aware conversations
Unlike DeepSeek's boring responses, ChatGPT offers more engaging and human-like interactions. ChatGPT is better at remembering context, providing detailed explanations, tailoring responses based on previous messages, and storing them in memory.
3. File upload and advanced analysis
Back in ChatGPT, you’re no longer limited to extracting text. You can now upload images of specifications, tables, and graphs, and let AI interpret every possible detail and nuance that you might miss just by looking at the images provided.
4. Voice chat for more natural interactions
Another great feature of ChatGPT that people often miss is the live chat capability. There are many interesting ways you can use live voice and video to assist with everyday tasks. This feature comes in handy when random, unexpected problems suddenly pop up. Simply open the app, send a photo directly from your camera phone, and tell the app the details of the problem or question. You can also continue to ask ChatGPT questions when you are busy, making the app more useful in real-world situations.
While many people no longer rely on DeepSeek for mission-critical tasks, it is still worth a try. In late 2022, ChatGPT quickly gained popularity and encountered similar issues to DeepSeek. This demonstrates that many of the issues users are currently experiencing with DeepSeek are due to scalability issues and time constraints in deploying features.
You'll definitely try DeepSeek again when it's a bit more mature. But for now, there's no reason to continue using DeepSeek, especially when ChatGPT already meets all the needs you have.