DeepSeek may have found a new way to improve AI's ability to remember

An AI model released by the Chinese AI company DeepSeek uses new techniques that could significantly improve AI's ability to "remember." Released last week, the optical character recognition (OCR) model works by extracting text from an image and turning it into machine-readable words. This is the same technology that powers scanner apps, translation of text in photos, and many accessibility tools. OCR is already a mature field with numerous high-performing systems, and according to the paper and some early reviews, DeepSeek's new model performs on par with top models on key benchmarks. But researchers say the model's main innovation lies in how it processes information--specifically, how it stores and retrieves memories. Improving how AI models "remember" information could reduce the computing power they need to run, thus mitigating AI's large (and growing) carbon footprint.