Australian stocks that are exposed to the artificial intelligence wave fell sharply on Tuesday as investors feared the emergence of a low-cost AI model from Chinese startup DeepSeek would threaten the dominance of current market leaders. Shares of AI software firm Appen fell 3.3 per cent, while AI chipmaker Brainchip lost 10.3 per cent by 0029 GMT. The technology sub-index was down 1 per cent. Last week, DeepSeek launched a free AI assistant that it says uses less data at a fraction of the cost