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My Frustrations With DeepSeek
I initially had high hopes for DeepSeek. As an AI chatbot marketed as a strong competitor to ChatGPT, it promises capabilities and an intelligent conversational experience. However, after using it extensively, I found myself increasingly frustrated with its limitations.
My Frustrations With DeepSeek
One of my biggest issues with DeepSeek is its server reliability. I often find myself wasting a lot of time waiting for replies. Those long waits often result in DeepSeek telling me that their servers are currently busy and that I should try again later. Though I understand that it takes time to scale something that exploded in popularity, it still doesn’t change the fact that their service is unusable at different times of the day.
When I could access DeepSeek, the conversations often felt bland. While they can generate text responses and communicate effectively, they often feel robotic and uninspired. The chatbot also struggles with maintaining context over long conversations. This makes it difficult for me to have a fluid and engaging discussion, especially when compared to ChatGPT’s ability to provide nuanced and context-aware responses.
Another big disappointment for me is the limitations on file uploads. While DeepSeek allows users to upload files, its functionality is restricted to text extraction only. It doesn’t support image processing, audio, and other file types when such functionalities are common in many AI chatbots. Since image and audio uploads are really useful features, I find this limitation hard to ignore.
Lastly, DeepSeek’s lack of a live voice feature on its smartphone app made me uninstall it almost immediately. The live voice feature made it convenient for me to use an AI chatbot on my phone. And with Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity all having this feature, I don’t see any point in using DeepSeek on my phone.
Why ChatGPT Is Better
While there are still practical reasons to continue using DeepSeek, I still turned back to using ChatGPT because I still find it the best AI chatbot in several key areas.
1. Reliability and Accessibility
ChatGPT is far more stable than DeepSeek. Even during peak usage times, I rarely encounter server downtimes that block my access to their service. Unlike DeepSeek, OpenAI got a huge head start and was able to invest in infrastructure, ensuring a reliable and smooth experience.
2. Engaging and Context-Aware Conversations
Unlike DeepSeek’s dull responses, ChatGPT offers more engaging and human-like interactions. It remembers context better, provides detailed explanations, adapts its responses based on previous messages, and saves them in memory.
3. Advanced File Uploads and Analysis
Going back to ChatGPT, I was no longer limited to text extraction. I could now upload images of tech specs, tables, and graphs and let the AI explain all the details and possible nuances I might miss just by looking at the provided image.
4. Voice Conversations for a More Natural Interaction
Another standout feature of ChatGPT that I missed a lot was its live voice capability. There are many interesting ways you can use live voice and vision to help with daily tasks. I personally find it useful when random, unexpected problems suddenly present themselves. I just open the app, send pictures straight from my camera phone, and tell it details about the problem or query. I can also keep asking ChatGPT questions while my hands are full, making it even more usable in real-life scenarios.
While I no longer rely on DeepSeek for important tasks, I still believe it’s worth checking out. Toward the end of 2022, ChatGPT was rapidly gaining popularity and had the same problems as DeepSeek. It gives me confidence that many of the problems I find with DeepSeek are due to scaling issues and time constraints when implementing features. That said, I will surely try DeepSeek again once it matures a bit more.
As for now, I find no reason to continue using it, especially since ChatGPT already satisfies all my needs.
