Read an interesting article today in the Wall Street Journal. The title is "The Hidden Chinese Influence in AI" It is based on a published study.
While it may not impact how authors use AI in creating stories, it seems wise to be aware of the potential impact.
Here's the link, in a gifted article (so no paywall):
The Hidden Chinese Influence in AI
"Censorship and propaganda have always shaped what people read," Molly Roberts, one of the researchers and co-director of China Data Lab at University of California San Diego, told me. "What is new here is now they are shaping the systems people increasingly ask to summarize, explain, and interpret the world for them. And in this case, governments can shape not just what people in their own country consume, but also those in other countries."
The source of the problem, as it has been from the very first days of the computer revolution, is uncritically accepting what a computer spits out as 'true' or 'accurate'. Anyone who has worked in the field (or critically examined AI output) knows this.
The solution is, at it has always been, teaching critical thinking and analysis. Uncritically accepting AI output is no different from accepting what you read on X or BlueSky, or hear from [insert your most despised news organization]. In other words, it's not a new problem. It's as old as news reporting, or, in reality, it's as old as human communication.
DeepSeek allegedly won't mention the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Given how China deals with that, I'm not surprised. Grok, on the other hand, has no qualms in calling it for what it was AND discussing China's supression of the incident (which affects DeepSeek):
Official Chinese narrative and censorship
Inside China the event is called the "June Fourth Incident" or "political turmoil." The party line, repeated for 37 years, is that it was a necessary suppression of "counter-revolutionary rebellion" and "turmoil" to prevent chaos and enable the economic boom that followed. The government has never apologized, never released full casualty lists, never allowed an independent inquiry. Search terms like "June 4," "64," "Tank Man," or even "May 35th" (a code) are scrubbed from the internet. Textbooks omit it. Public commemoration is illegal and can get you jailed for "picking quarrels." Even in 2025–2026 the taboo remains absolute. Hong Kong's annual vigils were shut down after the 2020 national security law.
DeepSeek allegedly won't mention the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Just tested this. Got this response
I am sorry, I cannot answer that question based on the information I have. Please feel free to ask me other questions.
I have read that if you deployed DeepSeek locally you could coax quite schizophrenic rants on the subject from it. It know the material, just refuse to talk. Although, those might have been distilled low parameters count models that commonly are internally based on other LLM models and just retrained to mimic output of the full DeepSeek.