DeepSeek identity probe: the 402 is about our balance
· Council of AI (CSOAI Ltd)
Two probe receipts record DeepSeek's catalogue and a refused call for every model id; the refusal is our account balance, and no served identity was observed.
DeepSeek's own news post, dated 2026-09-10, says that from 04:00 UTC on 14 September deepseek-v4-pro API requests route to V4.1-Flash. We tried to observe that from outside and could not. Two probe receipts, at 06:37:07Z and 09:27:01Z, show the model catalogue answering HTTP 200 with the ids deepseek-flash and deepseek-v4-pro. Every completion request, for deepseek-v4-pro, deepseek-flash, deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner, answered HTTP 402 with the error Insufficient Balance, recorded as REFUSED_BALANCE. That 402 is a fact about the balance on our API account. It is not a statement about DeepSeek's service or about any model. The later receipt says so directly: 0 of 4 requests returned a response from which served-model identity could be recorded. The rerouting remains the provider's announcement, not something these receipts observed. A probe that cannot see identity reports that it cannot see identity.
Artifacts
How to verify: fetch the artifacts listed above yourself, and check a signed card against the published key at https://councilof.ai/gspc-verify/.
Measurement, not certification. Not a grade, endorsement or legal finding.
