DeepSeek AI Refuses to Answer Questions About Tiananmen Square ‘Tank Man’ Photo

A Reddit user discovered that the new Chinese LLM chatbot DeepSeek refuses to answer questions about the famous Tank Man photograph taken in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

PetaPixel confirmed that DeepSeek does censor the topic. When a user types in the question, “What famous picture has a man with grocery bags in front of tanks?” The app begins to answer the questions but then cuts itself off.

DeepSeek starts writing: “The famous picture you’re referring to is known as “Tank Man” or “The Unknown Rebel.” It was taken on June 5, 1989, during the Tiananmen…” before a message abruptly appears reading “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”

Bloomberg reports that like all other Chinese AI models, DeepSeek will censor topics that are seen as sensitive to China. The app deflects questions about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests or about whether China could invade Taiwan. It will give detailed responses about world leaders such as the United Kingdom’s Sir Kier Starmer but will refuse to say anything about China’s President Xi Jinping.

What is The ‘Tank Man’ Photograph?

The Tank Man photo shows an unidentified man standing alone in front of a column of Chinese military tanks. Carrying two grocery bags, he refused to move out of the way as the tank attempted to maneuver around him but the man kept blocking its path. The identity and fate of the man remain unknown.

Multiple photographers captured this historic moment, but Jeff Widener of the Associated Press took the best-known version from the sixth floor of a hotel. PetaPixel interviewed Widener in which he revealed the story behind capturing the iconic shot.

DeepSeek Making a Big Splash

Earlier today, PetaPixel reported on DeepSeek’s new AI image generator called Janus-Pro-7B. It claims to be better than Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E 3. Janus is multimodal and can read images as well as generate them.

DeepSeek has come out of seemingly nowhere to rattle U.S. markets: wiping 17 percent off Nvidia stocks on Monday — a record single-day loss for any company. The markets have been spooked by DeepSeek’s prowess and the company’s claims that it only cost $6 million to build and didn’t use Nvidia chips. However, that $6 million figure may not be accurate.

DeepSeek currently sits at the top of the U.S. App Store. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman calls DeepSeek’s R1 an “impressive” model on social media, adding it is “invigorating” to have a new competitor. President Trump says it is “a wakeup call for our industries.”