Mistral AI launches mobile apps for 'Le Chat' chatbot

French artificial intelligence (AI) developer Mistral AI on Thursday launched iOS and Android apps for its "Le Chat" chatbot, apparently taking a page from Chinese contender DeepSeek's book.

The move comes as global tech luminaries, business leaders and politicians gather in Paris for an AI summit set to last until Tuesday.

It also follows weeks after DeepSeek's powerful yet low-resource R1 model stunned the world with its performance, shooting it to the top of app download charts.

Promising "the ultimate AI sidekick for life and work", Mistral posted a video to X showing users asking Le Chat to do tasks like generate images, create schedules for projects, and get live sports updates.

"This is a significant further step in our journey from beginnings as a scientific team to a team that's making products" for "as many people as possible", co-founder Arthur Mensch told daily Le Figaro.

The company also launched two subscription versions of Le Chat Thursday alongside the existing free option, with Mensch promising they would be "faster" and offer "an improved experience".

Mistral shot to prominence following its 2023 founding by researchers Mensch, Guillaume Lample and Timothee Lacroix, becoming Europe's greatest hope of matching US heavyweights.

It was initially hailed for its limited use of resources compared with the likes of Google and OpenAI -- a trait now associated with DeepSeek for many observers.

"We're managing to train our models more efficiently than DeepSeek," Mensch told Le Figaro.

"There are things we've learned, very specific mathematical facets. We're keen to contribute again to the progress that will be made on top of DeepSeek," he added.

Mistral took in 600 million euros (626 million) in a summer fundraising round, bringing its valuation to around six billion euros.

AFP news agency signed a deal with Mistral in mid-January allowing the startup's chatbot to draw on the news agency's articles to formulate responses.