Chinese generative AI models (DeepSeek and Qwen) rival ChatGPT-4 in ophthalmology queries with excellent performance in Arabic and English
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) has ushered in a new era of digital medical consultations, with patients turning to AI-driven tools for guidance. The emergence of Chinese-developed genAI models such as DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen-2.5 presented a challenge to the dominance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The aim of this study was to benchmark the performance of Chinese genAI models against ChatGPT-4o and to assess disparities in performance across English and Arabic. Following the METRICS checklist for genAI evaluation, Qwen-2.5, DeepSeek-R1, and ChatGPT-4o were assessed for completeness, accuracy, and relevance using the CLEAR tool in common patient ophthalmology queries. In English, Qwen-2.5 demonstrated the highest overall performance (CLEAR score: 4.43±0.28), outperforming both DeepSeek-R1 (4.31±0.43) and ChatGPT-4o (4.14±0.41), with p=0.002. A similar hierarchy emerged in Arabic, with Qwen-2.5 again leading (4.40±0.29), followed by DeepSeek-R1 (4.20±0.49) and ChatGPT-4o (4.14±0.41), with p=0.007. Each tested genAI model exhibited near-identical performance across the two languages, with ChatGPT-4o demonstrating the most balanced linguistic capabilities (p=0.957), while Qwen-2.5 and DeepSeek-R1 showed a marginal superiority for English. An in-depth examination of genAI performance across key CLEAR components revealed that Qwen-2.5 consistently excelled in content completeness, factual accuracy, and relevance in both English and Arabic, setting a new benchmark for genAI in medical inquiries. Despite minor linguistic disparities, all three models exhibited robust multilingual capabilities, challenging the long-held assumption that genAI is inherently biased toward English. These findings highlight the evolving nature of AI-driven medical assistance, with Chinese genAI models being able to rival or even surpass ChatGPT-4o in ophthalmology-related queries.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.025 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".