Government employees are primarily screened out of access to China’s new AI chatbot program, DeepSeek, by government agencies in South Korea and Australia this week.
Other countries, including the United States, have said they may also seek to block DeepSeek from government employees ‘ mobile devices, according to media reports. All cite “security concerns” about Chinese technology and ambiguity regarding how the operator handles user data.
DeepSeek made headlines last month when it claimed that its model would only cost a fraction of the money its rivals had spent building their own AI programs to build and that it caused share prices in US tech companies to drop. “I can’t believe ChatGPT lost its job to AI,” joked one Twitter user after the news.
What we know about DeepSeek and why some nations are outlawing it, below.
What is DeepSeek?
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup. It was founded in Hangzhou City in 2023 by businessman and entrepreneur Liang Feng. In 2016, Liang and two college classmates founded the $7 billion hedge fund company High-Flyer.
In January, DeepSeek released the latest model of its programme, DeepSeek R1, which is a free AI-powered chatbot with a look and feel very similar to ChatGPT, owned by California-headquartered OpenAI.
AI chatbots are computer programs that simulate conversation with a user in the manner of humans. Users can ask the bot for questions, and it uses information that it has been “trained” with and that it has access to on the internet to create conversational responses.
Among a plethora of potential uses, these programmes can be used to solve mathematics problems, draft text such as emails and documents, and translate or write codes.
What distinguishes DeepSeek from ChatGPT and other similar applications?
For one, its developers say, it is much, much cheaper to build.
When DeepSeek released a paper in December, it was claimed that Nvidia H800 chips would be required to power the most recent version of DeepSeek in order to “train” the company’s most recent model, which curates and inputs the information it needs to answer questions.
Only a small portion of the US tech giants’ multibillion-dollar AI budgets, including Google for Gemini and OpenAI for ChatGPT, are funded by US tech companies. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that OpenAI’s latest programme, GPT-4, cost more than $100m to train, Wired reported in April 2023.
On January 20, the public was given access to the new DeepSeek program. By January 27, DeepSeek’s app had already hit the top of Apple’s App Store chart. Nvidia, an American multinational with a nearly monopoly on producing semiconductors for generative AI, lost nearly $600 billion in market capitalization as a result when the share price dropped by 17%.
Which countries are banning DeepSeek’s AI programme?
Some government departments in various nations are requesting or passing regulations for the use of AI by their employees.  , These include:
United States
The US lawmakers planned to introduce a government bill on Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal, to prevent DeepSeek from using government-owned devices.
NASA, the US space agency, removed DeepSeek from its systems and employee devices on January 31. According to CNBC, the US Navy warned its members against using DeepSeek a week earlier because of “potential security and ethical concerns related to the model’s origin and usage.”
South Korea
A spokesperson for South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on Wednesday that the industry ministry had temporarily prohibited DeepSeek on employees’ devices, also citing security concerns.
Officials said that the government had urged ministries and agencies , on Tuesday to be careful about using AI programmes generally, including ChatGPT and DeepSeek.
The Personal Information Protection Commission, Seoul’s information privacy authority, made the announcement on January 31 that it would send DeepSeek a written request for information on how users’ personal information is managed.
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, which is run by the South Korean government, said it blocked the use of AI services on its workers’ devices including DeepSeek last month.
Australia
The Australian government announced on Tuesday that it had “security risks” for all government devices and had blocked access to DeepSeek.
The Department of Home Affairs secretary said in a statement on Tuesday that this restriction was required for all government agencies. The statement directed all government organizations to “prevent the use or installation of DeepSeek products, applications, and web services and, where discovered, remove all existing instances of DeepSeek products, applications, and web services from all Australian Government systems and devices.”
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said that the ban was “to protect Australia’s national security and national interest”, Australian media outlets reported.
Italy
Due to the lack of details about how DeepSeek might use user-provided personal data, on January 30, the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante) announced that it had ordered DeepSeek to “enforce the limitation on processing of Italian users’ data.”
The Garante had previously stated that it was looking into questions about how the Chinese startup handled and stored user data.
Taiwan
On Monday, Taiwan blocked government departments from using DeepSeek programmes, also blaming security risks.
Why has DeepSeek’s use been prohibited in some nations?
The majority of nations that block DeepSeek programs claim to be concerned about the security risks posed by the Chinese application. Additionally, they claim that there aren’t enough details about how the group will use or store user data.
According to DeepSeek’s privacy policy, it collects the following data from users:
- Personal information including email, phone number, password and date of birth, which are used to register for the application.
- Chat history in the application, including text or audio that the user inputs into the chatbot.
- Technical information about the user’s device and network, such as IP address, keystroke patterns and operating system.
This information is shared with service providers and advertising partners. This information is retained for “as long as necessary”, the company’s website states.
In accordance with ChatGPT’s privacy policy, OpenAI also collects contact information from users during registration, device information like IP addresses, and input from the chatbot “for only as long as we need,” according to the privacy statement from ChatGPT. This information may also be shared with OpenAI’s affiliates.
On Wednesday, ABC News cited a report by Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot Security, an Ontario-based cybersecurity firm which claimed that DeepSeek “has code hidden in its programming which has the built-in capability to send user data directly to the Chinese government”.  ,
Tsarynny told ABC that the DeepSeek application can send user data to “China Mobile,” an owned and run by the Chinese government, to the online registry for China Mobile. This assertion cannot be independently verified by Al Jazeera.
Is this an unusual practice?
“Virtually all major tech companies – from Meta to Google to OpenAI – exploit user data to some extent”, Eddy Borges-Rey, associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera.
“They use data for targeted advertising, algorithmic refinement and AI training. Many have received fines or inquiries for privacy violations, but they continue to operate because their activities fall under stricter laws, such as those in the EU and the US, he continued.
According to Borges-Rey, Chinese platforms like DeepSeek are “treated differently by the West because they are perceived to operate within the Chinese government, which has laws [such as the National Intelligence Law] that theoretically permit state access to corporate data.”
He added, “Western governments fear that user data collected by Chinese platforms could be used for espionage, influence operations, or surveillance. It’s up for debate whether this actually happens, but the mere possibility makes sense from a national security perspective.
By contrast, Western applications are not perceived as a national security threat by Western governments. Chinese businesses are seen as direct security threats that require bans, while Western businesses are frequently seen as problematic but can be fixed through regulation.
Concerns that ChatGPT had violated the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) were sparked in 2023 when it became known. Italy temporarily suspended the service for all users until April 1. On April 28, 2023, ChatGPT was restored in Italy and OpenAI said it had “addressed or clarified” the issues raised by the Garante. The Garante applauded the actions OpenAI took, according to the BBC.
Source: Aljazeera
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