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

With a boatload of news coming throughout the week, it is harding to take note of some of the biggest developments. In order to keep the readers posted, we have compiled the list of top tech stories this week. In this week’s Tech Recap: Apple announces plans to roll out Apple Intelligence to India in April, DeepSeek shakes up the AI world, WhatsApp thwarts a 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 were availalbe in US and other global markets since mid-January, the AI firm finally caught the limelight this week as it surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most downloaded app on Google Play Store and Apple App Store in multiple countries across the globe. 

DeepSeek’s sudden rise put a dent in claims by various AI companies that China was years behind US in the artificial intelligence race. Moreover, the cost effective models by DeepSeek also shattered the ongoing notion that developing high end large language models requires increasing amounts of computing power and capital. 

DeepSeek claims that its V3 model was made at a cost of around $5.6 million and was trained on older Nvidia H800 GPUs. Although there have been some suspicion on if DeepSeek is telling the truth regarding the stated figure, the Chinese startup’s AI models continue to be priced way cheaper than its western competitos.

2) WhatsApp claims it spoilt a Paragon attack: 

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

Paragon sells high end surveillance software to government clients and pitch their services as way to tackling crime and protecting national security, as per 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 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.”