AI-generated images of DeepSeek startup team circulate online

The two images of a group of people were shared in separate X posts on January 28 and February 2, alongside captions claiming they show the young DeepSeek team.

"The average age of the Deepseek team is less than 35 years old. This group of young people has caused panic in the technology community in the United States," reads the simplified Chinese caption of one of the posts.

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Screenshot of the false posts, captured on February 18, 2025 

DeepSeek's R1 chatbot stunned investors and industry insiders with its ability to match the functions of its Western competitors at a fraction of the cost, though a number of countries have questioned its storage of user data and have moved to ban it from government devices (archived link).

Founded in May 2023, the firm is the brainchild of tech and business prodigy Liang Wenfeng, who was born in 1985 (archived link).

In an interview with a Chinese tech media 36kr in May 2023, Liang said the core technical positions of the company "are essentially filled with freshmen and people who graduated a year or two ago" (archived link).

The images were also viewed tens of thousands of times elsewhere on X and Facebook.

However, they contain inconsistencies that indicate they were generated with AI tools. 

'Faceswap algorithm'

AFP ran the images through the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify tool, from AFP partner veraai.eu. The tool can identify traces left by AI image generation software.

The results indicate a 99 percent chance the first image was created with a faceswap algorithm, while it was 100 percent likely the second image was "manipulated through face swapping".

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Screenshots of the image analysis results 

The two images contained inconsistencies indicating they were AI-generated, said Shu Hu, director of the Purdue Machine Learning and Media Forensics (M2) Lab (archived link). He pointed out blurry ears and a lack of details in teeth and pupils in both images.

Siwei Lyu, director of the University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab (UB MDFL) also pointed out a "noticeable colour difference" on one face, an unnaturally long neck and some identical eyes and mouths of the people in the images (archived link).

"Everyone's smile in the images is unnaturally uniform, resembling the stereotypical smile learned by an AI model," Lyu told AFP. "Their teeth are showing [in the images] at nearly the same angle, which is unusual for real photos."

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Screenshot of image with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP 

In addition to the blurry rendering of ears, the second image also features irregular "text" on the uniforms, as well as an erroneous DeepSeek logo in the background. The company's genuine logo is a whale.

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Screenshot of image with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP