DeepSeek Boosts AI Agent Offering With New Creator Mode

(Bloomberg) -- DeepSeek has unveiled a new option to quickly create custom plugins that help users to tackle a range of complex tasks, the latest move by the Chinese lab to bolster its AI agent offerings.

The new "creator mode" allows users to "turn ideas into plugins that you can use," the DeepSeek Harness team said in a post on X. The Hangzhou-based company showcased ways to make plugins to render 3D models as well as a video editing workbench by providing instructions in plain English, among other examples.

Top AI developers in the US and China are competing to offer more advanced AI agents that can take on work for professionals and everyday users, including writing code, fielding financial research and more. DeepSeek's AI agent is aimed more at developers than casual users.

Earlier this year, DeepSeek created the Harness team to focus on helping build AI agents that can complete with AI coding services — a lucrative area of focus for US firms like Anthropic PBC. DeepSeek dropped an enhanced coding assistant on Saturday that's designed to proactively help resolve issues while requiring minimal human attention.

The term harness refers to the software scaffolding that wraps around a large language model, which enables AI agents to manage more complex tasks.

To better compete with Anthropic and OpenAI, DeepSeek has raised about 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) in its latest fundraising round, one of China's largest-ever, ahead of its initial public offering.