Microsoft confirmed it will bring the DeepSeek R1 model to Azure cloud and GitHub in a move that it hopes will lessen its reliance on OpenAI's models.

DeepSeek last week launched a free AI assistant that it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost of incumbent services. By Monday, the assistant had overtaken U.S. rival ChatGPT in downloads from Apple's App Store,

Despite the controversy surrounding the Chinese open-source model, it has received the blessing of US companies that say their versions of it are safer and feature less censorship.