DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT, Copilot & Gemini – We Put Them to the Test!

By Vanessa Cardwell, CMO & MD at Bite IT Marketing

You’d have had to be living under a rock to have missed the waves caused by the launch of DeepSeek, the Chinese AI app that has us all in a spin.

Released on the 20th of January, the app quickly leapt up the Apple download chart and knocked significant value off tech giant Nvidia’s shares – a staggering $1 trillion as reported by The Independent. The big shock came from the cost of the development of the app itself – coming in at a fraction of the cost of other AI platforms due to the fact it uses fewer advanced chips – hence the heavy hit to Nvidia.

So, along with the cost-effective development, what makes DeepSeek so special?

The app is designed to revolutionise personalised productivity and data analysis, seamlessly integrate with existing workflows, provide real-time insights, and adapt to user behaviour. There is already much praise online for its intuitive interface and transformative potential, with early adopters reporting increased efficiency and decision-making capabilities.

Its rapid adoption highlights the growing demand for AI-driven tools that simplify complex tasks and deliver actionable intelligence, positioning DeepSeek as a game-changer in the productivity space.

All sounds pretty positive, right?

We decided to test it for ourselves. We asked ChatGPT4, Copilot Pro, Google’s Gemini, and DeepSeek the same question and analysed the answers. And, of course, we made it topical:

What are the top 3 cyber security threats facing UK business in 2025 and what countries do they come from?

Here’s what they told us.

Gemini

Gemini identified the top three cybersecurity threats as AI-powered attacks, supply chain vulnerabilities, and ransomware. It provided context for each threat, mentioning Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Additionally, Gemini emphasised the importance of not pinpointing specific countries to avoid creating blind spots, noting that cyber attacks can originate from anywhere. The user interface was intuitive, the text was easy to follow, and the additional information provided built out a solid response.

DeepSeek

DeepSeek identified the top three cyber security threats as ransomware attacks, state-sponsored cyber espionage, and phishing and social engineering attacks. The app provided interesting content on how it analysed these threats through security trends, geopolitical dynamics, and tech advancements. Additionally, DeepSeek offered helpful and detailed considerations, provided useful sources of further information, named specific groups responsible for each cyber attack, and detailed the origin of each of the top three threats.

Copilot

Copilot listed its top 3 threats as AI-driven cyberattacks, ransomware, and supply chain attacks and namechecked the countries of origin. The response lacked any real context, whilst Copilot did provide some useful reference sources, the response lacked depth, and further prompting would be needed to build the response out in order to be meaningful.

ChatGPT4

Listed its top 3 as ransomware attacks, supply chain attacks, and phishing and social engineering. The shortest response of the 4 tested, with little to no context on the type of attacks and just the briefest of descriptions on their origins.

Conclusions

Of course, this is a quick and dirty test. But it highlights an important point for marketers: the real value of AI tools lies in their ability to enhance decision-making, streamline workflows, and provide actionable insights. When used for marketing research, these tools need to go beyond surface-level answers. To stay competitive, they must deliver detailed, context-rich results that allow us to shape better strategies and create more personalised, impactful campaigns.

Based on this simple test, I was most impressed with the results from Gemini and DeepSeek over any of the others. The user interfaces on both are indeed super easy and intuitive, but most importantly the information provided was more detailed, well-referenced, and included additional context, so I could better understand the threats and where to go for further information. I didn’t have to use any follow-up prompts to build out the information, like I would have had to with both CoPilot and ChatGPT4. The top 3 threats listed varied slightly from one platform to the next and, interestingly, AI threats were not listed by DeepSeek in its top 3, but an additional considerations paragraph added AI threats as an emerging trend and one to watch.

Overall DeepSeek, closely followed by Gemini, gets my vote here. It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes the others to catch up.

Love to hear your thoughts?

Vanessa Cardwell is the Chief Marketing Officer and Managing Director at Bite IT Marketing, where she leads innovative marketing strategies and champions the integration of AI in content management.