Microsoft staff aren’t allowed to make use of DeepSeek attributable to knowledge safety and propaganda considerations, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith stated in a Senate hearing as we speak.
“At Microsoft we don’t enable our staff to make use of the DeepSeek app,” Smith stated, referring to DeepSeek’s utility service (which is out there on each desktop and cell.)
Smith stated Microsoft hasn’t put DeepSeek in its app retailer over these considerations, both.
Though a lot of organizations and even international locations have imposed restrictions on DeepSeek, that is the primary time Microsoft has gone public about such a ban.
Smith stated the restriction stems from the chance that knowledge can be saved in China and that DeepSeek’s solutions might be influenced by “Chinese language propaganda.”
DeepSeek’s privateness coverage states it shops consumer knowledge on Chinese language servers. Such knowledge is topic to Chinese language regulation, which mandates cooperation with the nation’s intelligence companies. DeepSeek additionally closely censors matters thought of delicate by the Chinese language authorities.
Regardless of Smith’s vital feedback about DeepSeek, Microsoft offered up DeepSeek’s R1 mannequin on its Azure cloud service shortly after it went viral earlier this 12 months.
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However that’s a bit totally different from providing DeepSeek’s chatbot app itself. Since DeepSeek is open supply, anyone can obtain the mannequin, retailer it on their very own servers and provide it to their purchasers with out sending the information again to China.
That, nevertheless, doesn’t take away different dangers just like the mannequin spreading propaganda or producing insecure code.
In the course of the Senate listening to, Smith stated that Microsoft had managed to go inside DeepSeek’s AI mannequin and “change” it to take away “dangerous uncomfortable side effects.” Microsoft didn’t elaborate on precisely what it did to DeepSeek’s mannequin, referring TechCrunch to Smith’s remarks.
In its preliminary launch of DeepSeek on Azure, Microsoft wrote that DeepSeek underwent “rigorous crimson teaming and security evaluations” earlier than it was placed on Azure.
Whereas we will’t assist stating that DeepSeek’s app can be a direct competitor to Microsoft’s personal Copilot web search chat app, Microsoft doesn’t ban all such chat opponents from its Home windows app retailer.
Perplexity is out there within the Home windows app retailer, for example. Though any apps by Microsoft’s archrival Google (together with the Chrome browser and Google’s chatbot Gemini) didn’t floor in our webstore search.