TECH and science news.

DeepSeek has triggered a wave of artificial intelligence (AI) deployments across China's hi-tech manufacturing sector - including personal computers, robots and electric vehicles (EVs) - after the company emerged as the country's newest symbol of overcoming US sanctions.

PC giant Lenovo Group, Shenzhen-based robotics firm UBTech and EV maker Geely are among the first major Chinese manufacturing enterprises to push DeepSeek technology into their products.

Those initiatives reflect how much DeepSeek has caught the attention of the technology industry at home and abroad, following its recent AI breakthrough.

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The Hangzhou-based start-up released two high-performance AI models, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, that were developed at a fraction of the cost and computing power that major tech companies muster to build large language models - the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.

Lenovo has integrated DeepSeek's model into its Xiaotian AI assistant on its PCs, enhancing capabilities from text understanding and code generation to maths and reasoning skills, the company said in a Weibo post this week.

Xiaotian was introduced early last year by Lenovo - which plans a wider roll-out into its tablets, smartphones and other products - to automate tasks such as summarising or translating documents, as well as transcribing the minutes of a meeting.

Lenovo is considering a closer collaboration with DeepSeek, according to a report by state-owned Securities Times, citing sources close to the company.

The world's top PC maker did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Lenovo's engagement with DeepSeek comes the same week that the computer maker published a commissioned report, the 2025 CIO Playbook, that found proving AI's return on investment to be the greatest barrier to the technology's adoption in organisations.

The report revealed that 37 per cent of management remained sceptical or had reservations toward AI, while about nine out of 10 information-technology professionals in these organisations said that AI met their expectations.

"AI is a marathon and a sprint - requiring parallel efforts to move quickly to modernise systems, while ensuring the future-proofing of tech stacks," said Ken Wong, president of Lenovo's solutions and services group. "Our research shows organisations need to simplify the design, deployment and integration of AI solutions to demonstrate the impact of these investments. This will instil greater confidence and fuel future investments."

DeepSeek's AI breakthrough appears to level the playing field for enterprises around the world, as the Chinese firm's models offer enterprises access to advanced technology at a lower cost.

APPLE is reportedly days away from unveiling a new iPhone, that could hit shelves later in February.

And it will be Apple's most affordable model of the last couple of years.

Rumours of a new iPhone SE were born around February 2023, though it was notably missing from Apple's iPhone 15 and 16 launches.

Yet its existence could be announced "as early as next week", according to Bloomberg.

And with stocks of the iPhone SE 3 running low on the ground, Bloomberg also reported, a launch could be right around the corner.

The tech giant has not released an iPhone SE since 2022.

AN asteroid the size of a football pitch cannot be ignored, an expert has warned after its chances of hitting Earth increased.

The discovery sparked plans that a nuclear weapon could be sent into space to deflect the space rock measuring 330ft by 130ft which could smash into the planet, causing severe damage.

AN easy-to-miss Netflix button could change the way you watch telly on your phone forever.

It's a handy trick that can save you storage – and even help your phone work a little faster.

The feature is called Smart Downloads, and it's an extension of the regular Offline Viewing that you might have used.

Offline Viewing lets you download content to watch offline, which is handy if you're going to be without signal.

But the problem with Offline Viewing is that you'll need to plan ahead and download content manually, which isn't always ideal.

Netflix figured that this was indeed annoying and built two Smart Download tricks to help you out.