Weekly Tech Recap: DeepSeek shakes up AI world, OpenAI rolls out o3-Mini, WhatsApp thwarts Paragon attack and more

With so much news coming out this week, it can be hard to keep track of some of the biggest developments. To keep readers up to date, we have compiled a list of the week’s top tech stories. In this week’s Tech Recap: Apple announces plans to bring Apple Intelligence to India in April, DeepSeek shakes up the AI world, WhatsApp thwarts spyware attack and more.

Top tech news of the week:

1) DeepSeek takes the world by storm: 

While DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 language models have been available in the US and other global markets since mid-January, the AI company finally grabbed the spotlight this week when it surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded app on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in several countries around the world.

DeepSeek’s sudden rise has put a dent in claims by various AI companies that China is years behind the US in the artificial intelligence race. Moreover, DeepSeek’s low-cost models have also shattered the persistent notion that the development of high-end, large-scale language models requires ever-increasing amounts of computing power and capital.

DeepSeek claims that its V3 model cost around $5.6 million and was trained on older Nvidia H800 GPUs. Although there has been some suspicion as to whether DeepSeek is telling the truth about this figure, the Chinese startup’s AI models continue to be priced much lower than its Western competitors.

2) WhatsApp claims it spoilt a Paragon attack: 

WhatsApp announced this week that it had disrupted a hacking campaign linked to Israeli spyware company Paragon. The campaign aimed to hack the phones of around 90 people, including journalists and other members of civil society.

Paragon sells high-end surveillance software to government clients and promotes its services as a way to fight crime and protect national security, according to a Reuters report.

3) Govt reduces custom duty on parts involved in mobile manufacturing: 

During her 8th budget speech on Saturday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an exemption on certain parts involved in the manufacturing of mobile phones including camera module, connectors, USB cables, fingerprint readers, raw materials used in the manufacture of wired headsets and more, which were earlier taxed at 2.5%, will be exempted from customs duty. The move is likely to help the local manufacturing efforts of foreign companies such as Apple and Xiaomi.

4) OpenAI rolls out o3-Mini reasoning model: 

After previewing the o3-Mini reasoning model during the 12-day Ship-mas event in December, OpenAI is finally releasing the new model to both free and paid users. OpenAI’s first-ever ‘free’ reasoning model comes as the company faces increasing competition from China’s DeepSeek, whose R1 reasoning model has been freely available since its global debut in early January.

OpenAI says its new o3-Mini model has been optimised for tasks such as maths, coding and science, and matches the performance of o1 in most reasoning and assessment tests, while significantly outperforming o1-Mini with “more accurate and clearer answers”.

5) Apple Intelligence coming to India in April:

Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed that the Cupertino-based tech giant will be rolling out Apple Intelligence in a localised English version to users in India and several other countries. While Apple Intelligence is already available to iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 Pro users in India, they had to go into Settings and change their default language to English (US). Following a new iOS 18 update in April, eligible iPhone users will likely be able to access Apple’s AI features in iOS 18 without having to change their default language setting.

Speaking during an earnings call on Thursday, Cook said, “In April, we’re bringing Apple Intelligence to more languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese, as well as localised English to Singapore and India.”