South Korea ordered a ban on new downloads of DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot powered by artificial intelligence after a complaint was lodged with South Korea's personal data protection watchdog. DeepSeek would only be reinstated to South Korean users again when "improvements and remedies" are being enacted under the conditions of South Korea's personal data protection law, said the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC).
DeepSeek's record-breaking popularity of over a million weekly downloads in South Korea invoked increased concern and drastic action by governments all over the world regarding matters of privacy and national security. The PIPC claimed evidence of the removal of the app from the Apple App Store and Google Play.
This followed initial actions by government agencies in South Korea, prohibiting their employees from downloading the chatbot on government computers.
Interim president Choi Sang-mok has called DeepSeek a "shock" with the impact to be felt even beyond the realm of AI. Existing users continue to download the app or log in on DeepSeek's website despite the ban on the new download.
There have also been actions against DeepSeek from other nations and regions. It is prohibited in Taiwan and Australia on all official platforms, and Italy's regulator, who banned ChatGPT in 2023, also banned DeepSeek, asking the company to resolve privacy policy issues before being available again through app stores. In the US, politicians have introduced bills to ban DeepSeek on government computers because of the surveillance issue, and some states like Texas, Virginia, and New York have taken the step to do likewise for their employees.
DeepSeek’s “large language model” (LLM) has demonstrated reasoning capabilities comparable to those of US models like OpenAI’s o1, but reportedly at a significantly lower cost for training and operation. This has led to questions regarding the massive investments in AI infrastructure in the US and elsewhere.
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