South Korea’s knowledge privateness watchdog company, the Private Info Safety Fee (PIPC), stated on Thursday that China’s DeepSeek synthetic intelligence (AI) transferred consumer knowledge to firms in China and the US with out acquiring correct consent.
DeepSeek is an AI platform whose debut in early 2025 rocked the tech world as a result of it was developed at a fraction of the price of competing merchandise akin to ChatGPT. DeepSeek was briefly probably the most downloaded apps on the planet — earlier than cybersecurity analysts identified it was a nightmare mixture of consumer privateness violations and Chinese language Communist Celebration censorship.
DeepSeek was solely obtainable for a couple of month in South Korea earlier than the federal government banned it over privateness issues. The PIPC rapidly decided that this system was feeding consumer knowledge to ByteDance, the controversial Chinese language tech big that created one other infamously intrusive on-line product, TikTok.
PIPC in February requested the DeepSeek startup firm to droop additional downloads of its product in South Korea pending the outcomes of a full investigation and the Chinese language firm complied. The app was not technically banned, however South Korean customers might now not obtain it.
“The fee is within the stage of investigation whether or not DeepSeek poses any hurt. A full-scale ban might be controversial earlier than its legal responsibility is formally decided,” PIPC defined in February.
The Chinese language authorities was enraged by South Korea’s motion, accusing Seoul of “politicizing” AI expertise and insisting that Chinese language firms at all times honor overseas privateness rights and rules — despite the fact that DeepSeek admitted it violated South Korea’s knowledge privateness guidelines.
Chinese language officers insinuated that South Korea was appearing on the behest of the US, because the U.S. Home Choose Committee on the Chinese language Communist Celebration launched a report in late January that discovered DeepSeek’s responses to consumer queries had been closely edited to adapt to Chinese language Communist ideology. DeepSeek is at present below investigation by the Home Power and Commerce Committee for knowledge privateness points and doable ties to the Chinese language authorities.
South Korea’s investigation discovered that DeepSeek transferred knowledge from as much as 1.5 million customers to a few firms in China and one in the US between January 15 and February 15, when downloads had been suspended.
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