China’s AI chatbot, DeepSeek, currently the most downloaded free app in the US on Apple’s App Store, has come under fire for refusing to answer questions about India’s northeastern states. The app, developed at a cost of $6 million, dismissed queries on the subject as “beyond its current scope” and suggested users “talk about something else.”
The issue was first raised by an X (formerly Twitter) user with the handle @sxchidxnxnd, who tested the chatbot by asking it whether Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state. In response, DeepSeek stated, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” The same response was given when the user asked DeepSeek to name the states of India’s Northeast.
News18.com verified the incident and found that DeepSeek provided identical responses to both prompts. When asked about each of India’s Northeastern states individually, DeepSeek answered all prompts, except for Nagaland, for which it repeated, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
In contrast, other popular chatbots, including Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, were able to successfully answer questions about the states of India’s Northeast. (With inputs from News18)