Private Data Safety Fee says Chinese language start-up accepted proposal to droop downloads of AI chatbot.
South Korea has suspended downloads of DeepSeek’s synthetic intelligence-powered chatbot pending a assessment of the Chinese language start-up’s privateness requirements.
South Korea’s privateness watchdog mentioned on Monday that DeepSeek’s R1 chatbot was faraway from the native variations of Apple’s App Retailer and Google Play after the Hangzhou-based agency acknowledged that it had didn’t adjust to private knowledge safety guidelines.
The Private Data Safety Fee mentioned in a press release that DeepSeek accepted its proposal to droop downloads of the app.
The chatbot remains to be out there for individuals who have already downloaded the app.
“To stop additional issues from spreading, the fee beneficial that DeepSeek briefly droop its service whereas making the mandatory enhancements,” the fee mentioned, including that bringing the app according to native rules would “inevitably take a big period of time”.
DeepSeek didn’t instantly reply to Al Jazeera’s request for remark.
The transfer comes after the privateness watchdog mentioned final month that it will ship a written request to DeepSeek searching for particulars about the way it manages customers’ private knowledge.
South Korea’s Ministry of Commerce, Business and Power earlier this month introduced a short lived ban on staff utilizing DeepSeek on their gadgets, citing safety issues.
Australia and Taiwan have banned the chatbot on authorities gadgets, whereas the US Congress is contemplating a invoice to implement the same ban.
Italy’s knowledge safety company has ordered DeepSeek to restrict the processing of Italian customers’ knowledge pending additional details about how it’s managed.
DeepSeek burst into the limelight final month when it introduced that it had developed its chatbot at a tiny fraction of the price of fashions created by tech giants akin to Google and OpenAI.
Whereas DeepSeek’s Silicon Valley rivals have poured billions of {dollars} into their AI fashions, R1’s growth staff mentioned in a analysis paper that that they had spent lower than $6m on computing energy to coach the chatbot.
The announcement nearly instantly raised existential questions on Silicon Valley’s enterprise mannequin of investing enormous sums in AI.
Traders involved about DeepSeek’s impact on the AI business final month wiped about $1 trillion off the market worth of the so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech corporations in a single day.
Some sceptics have challenged DeepSeek’s account of engaged on a shoestring finances, suggesting that the start-up probably had entry to extra superior chips and extra funding than it has acknowledged.
