Chinese models are good. Read the terms before you deploy one.

DeepSeek released an updated model on Saturday that it says is faster and leaner, and the Chinese open-weight cadence shows no sign of slowing. The engineering is impressive and businesses are right to look.

Looking is not deploying. When a company evaluates an assistant, the questions that decide the outcome are rarely about benchmarks. Under which law is the contract governed? Where is the data stored? Are my employees’ prompts used for training by default, and how do I opt out? Who do I send a copyright notice to, and what happens next? Several Chinese services answer those questions in ways that have led governments in Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan and the Czech Republic to restrict them on official devices. That is not a judgement on the researchers; it is a fact about the terms.

We published a comparison on this site that puts ELP GPT beside the best-known assistants from the United States, Europe and China on exactly those dimensions, sourced and dated. Our own answers: Ontario law, no ELP model training on customer conversations without notice and consent, a published copyright process, and third-party processing disclosed in our privacy policy. If a competitor’s terms are better on a line, we will say so.

— Edgar Melo Costa, founder

Founder’s notes are opinion. They are not investment, legal or professional advice.