South Korea has banned new downloads of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence ( AI ) chatbot, according to the country’s personal data protection watchdog.
When “improvements and treatments” are made to ensure the Artificial type adheres with the nation’s personal data protection laws, the federal agency stated.
With over a million regular customers, DeepSeek rose to the top of the app store charts in the week following its global success.
However, its rise in popularity attracted attention from nations all over the world, which have placed restrictions on the application due to concerns about privacy and national security.
The DeepSeek game went offline on Saturday night according to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission.
Following a number of South Korean government authorities ‘ orders, they stopped their workers from installing the bot on their workstations.
South Korea’s standing leader Choi Sang-mok has described Deepseek as a” shock”, that may affect the government’s business, beyond AI.
Individuals who already have it on their phones will be able to use it or they can simply access it via DeepSeek’s web despite the expulsion of new files.
China’s Deepseek rocked the technology industry, the markets and America’s confidence in its AI leadership, when it released its latest app at the end of last month.
Its quick rise as one of the world’s favorite AI bots sparked fears in different areas.
Aside from South Korea, Taiwan and Australia have also banned it from all government devices.
Italy’s controller, which quickly banned ChatGPT in 2023, has done the same with DeepSeek, which has been asked to address concerns over its privacy policy before it becomes available once on game stores.
However, politicians in the US have proposed a bill banning DeepSeek from national products, citing security issues.
At the state-government levels, Texas, Virginia and New York, have now introduced such guidelines for their staff.
DeepSeek’s “large speech design” ( LLM) has reasoning skills that are similar to US concepts such as OpenAI’s o1, but presumably requires a fraction of the cost to train and operate.
That has posed concerns about the billions of dollars being invested in AI system in the US and other countries.
Jean Mackenzie provided extra monitoring in Seoul.