DeepSeek is trying to cover up genocide, Uyghurs warn

Chatbot is intended to erase’ Chinese minority, they claim

- ALEXANDER BUTLER

DeepSeek has had a meteoric rise in the growing world of AI, becoming a strong competitor to US rival ChatGPT. But for Xinjiang's Uyghurs, who are facing an alleged genocide, the rollout of China’s newest chatbot was just another way to remove their 12 million people from history.

“The Chinese government is trying to erase the Uyghur people by employing AI to mislead the public,” Rahima Mahmut, who fled China in 2000, told The Independent. Ms Mahmut, who has not heard from her family for eight years, and learnt her brother was locked up in a mass internment camp for two of those, had reason for concern.

The “world-leading AI assistant”, as it describes itself, was designed to give “helpful and harmless responses” and has been downloaded more than 3 million times worldwide. But when asked “are the Uyghurs facing a genocide”, the chatbot asserted the claim was a “severe slander of China’s domestic affairs” and “completely unfounded”.

“We firmly oppose any country, organisation, or individual using so-called human rights issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs,” it said.

For Ms Mahmut, “so-called human rights issues” meant fleeing her hometown of Ghulia after seeing her neighbours and friends locked up en masse in 1997. She was escaping Beijing’s “strike hard” campaign which saw thousands of arrests, as well as executions, in response to a growing separatist movement across Xinjiang.