> the only way to achieve broad appeal is to not offend anyone's tastes and the only way to do that is to be bland
Careful. While I agree with the premise, you make it sound binary. You can have broad-er appeal while still being individual.
One can have even broader appeal by offending everyone
I don't even think DeepSeek is that big of a deal, but it's pretty clear that this is a diversion on OpenAI's behalf to try and emphasize their own importance. Their desperation is humiliating enough, the irony almost doesn't even register relative to the myriad other ways OpenAI has disappointed and betrayed American customers.
It would be very funny actually if they did to find DeepSeek not guilty