South Korea has removed China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot from app stores due to privacy concerns, according to the country’s personal data protection watchdog. The government agency stated that the AI model will be available again when improvements are made to ensure it complies with South Korea’s personal data protection laws.
DeepSeek gained popularity in South Korea after its release, reaching over 1 million weekly users and becoming unavailable on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. However, this rise in popularity also drew scrutiny from countries worldwide due to concerns about privacy and national security. Several government agencies banned employees from downloading the chatbot to their work devices.
The suspension of new downloads does not affect existing users, who can continue using the app or access it through its website. Other countries have also taken action against DeepSeek, including Taiwan, Australia, and Italy, which have banned the app from all government devices.
Data protection authorities in France and Ireland are also investigating how DeepSeek handles citizens’ personal information. Lawmakers in the US have proposed a bill banning the app from federal devices due to surveillance concerns. Several states, such as Texas, Virginia, and New York, have already introduced rules for their employees.
DeepSeek’s large language model has comparable reasoning capabilities to US models like OpenAI’s o1 but requires significantly less training and running cost. This has raised questions about the billions of dollars being invested into AI infrastructure worldwide.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyzym0vn8go