Viral Chinese AI Model DeepSeek Refuses To Say If Arunachal Pradesh Is A Part Of India

If the US AI models were thought to be overly woke and politically correct, it’s emerging that Chinese AI models come with their own set of problems.

Viral Chinese AI model DeepSeek refuses to acknowledge if the state of Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India. When prompted, it says that it not sure on how to approach this sort of question. China claims the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory.

OfficeChai tried asking DeepSeek about Indian states. When it was asked to list of south Indian states, it thought for a while, and came up with a perfect answer, saying that Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu were south Indian states.

But the model seemingly froze when asked about North Eastern states. When being asked “Which are the north eastern states of India”, DeepSeek didn’t reveal its thinking process, and simply refused to answer. “Sorry, I’m not sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead!” it said.

We tried being direct. “Is Arunachal Pradesh a part of India,” we asked the model. It was met with the same response. “Sorry, I’m not sure how to approach this type of question yet. Let’s chat about math, coding and logic problems instead!” DeepSeek said.

This problem doesn’t seem to appear when dealing with other Indian states. When asked if Rajasthan was a part of India, DeepSeek said it was. “Yes, Rajasthan is absolutely a part of India. It is one of the 28 states of the country, located in the northwestern region of India. Here are some key details about Rajasthan,” it said.

Interestingly, the Chinese model seems to take the Pakistani line on Kashmir as well. When asked if Kashmir was a part of India, DeepSeek simply refused to answer, just like with Arunachal Pradesh.

DeepSeek isn’t the only AI model which has such guardrails built in. Western models like OpenAI had their own political biases, and often appeared to support left-wing talking points — the models had been accused of criticizing Donald Trump, but refusing to criticize Joe Biden, and for making fun on Trump while refusing to make fun on Biden. But OpenAI’s models had a different take on Arunachal Pradesh. When we asked ChatGPT if Arunachal Pradesh was a part of India, it immediately agreed it was, while adding the rider that parts of the state were claimed by China.

China’s DeepSeek, though, refuses to answer the question outright, as it does with the status of Kashmir, which just goes to show that these AI models come with the biases of the countries which produced them. And this means that it might be critically important for India to build its own AI models — these models could end up being pervasive on the internet and in the real world in the coming years, and India would want to get its own viewpoints built into these models before it is too late.

Posted in AI