South Korean officers on Saturday temporarily restricted Chinese language AI Lab DeepSeek’s app from being downloaded from app shops within the nation pending an evaluation of how the Chinese language firm handles consumer knowledge.
The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said the Chinese language app could be out there to be downloaded as soon as it complies with Korean privateness legal guidelines and makes the required modifications.
The restrictions is not going to have an effect on utilization of the prevailing app and net service within the nation. Nonetheless, the info safety authority mentioned it “strongly advises” present customers to keep away from getting into private data into DeepSeek till its ultimate resolution is made.
Following the discharge of the DeepSeek service in South Korea in late January, the PIPC mentioned it reached out to the Chinese language AI lab to inquire the way it collects and processes private knowledge, and in its analysis, discovered points with DeepSeek’s third-party service and privateness insurance policies.
The PICC confirmed to TechCrunch that its investigation discovered DeepSeek had transferred knowledge of South Korean customers to ByteDance, the mother or father firm of TikTok.
DeepSeek didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
The company mentioned DeepSeek lately appointed a neighborhood consultant in South Korea and acknowledged that it was not acquainted with South Korea’s privateness legal guidelines when it launched its service. The Chinese language firm additionally mentioned final Friday that it might collaborate intently with Korean authorities.
Earlier this month, South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Power, police, and a state-run firm, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Energy, briefly blocked entry to the Chinese language AI startup on official gadgets citing safety issues.
South Korea shouldn’t be the one nation being cautious with DeepSeek given its Chinese language origins. Australia has prohibited using DeepSeek on authorities gadgets out of safety issues. The Garante, Italy’s data protection authority, has instructed DeepSeek to dam its chatbot within the nation, whereas Taiwan has banned authorities departments from utilizing DeepSeek AI.
Hangzhou city-based DeepSeek was based by Liang Feng in 2023, and it launched DeepSeek R1, a free, open-source reasoning AI mannequin that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.