In 2023 Liang Wenfeng established DeepSeek as a Chinese artificial intelligence startup that currently operates in the Chinese and international markets. Modern society functions with artificial intelligence as an essential element which people use every day.
South Korea’s Personal Information Commission announced that DeepSeek has agreed to suspend downloads of its AI chatbot after it acknowledged failing to comply with personal data protection rules, as reported by Al Jazeera.
However, the chatbot remains available to users who have already downloaded the app. “To prevent further concerns from spreading, the commission recommended that DeepSeek temporarily suspend its service while making the necessary improvements,” the commission stated, according to Al Jazeera.
According to Al Jazeera, DeepSeek’s R1 chatbot was removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play after the company acknowledged its failure to comply with personal data protection rules.
The move comes after the Commission said last month that it would send a written request to DeepSeek seeking details about how it manages users’ personal data. Notably, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy earlier this month announced a temporary ban on employees using DeepSeek on their devices, citing security concerns.
Several countries across the world have expressed their apprehensions towards DeepSeek AI. Al Jazeera noted that earlier Australia and Taiwan had banned the chatbot on government devices, while the US Congress is considering a bill to implement a similar ban. Italy’s data protection agency had also ordered DeepSeek to limit the processing of Italian users’ data pending further information about how it is managed. DeepSeek came into limelight last month when it announced that it had developed its chatbot at a tiny fraction of the cost of models created by tech giants such as Google and OpenAI.
Where at one end, DeepSeek’s rival companies had poured billions of dollars into their AI models, Al Jazeera reported that R1’s development team said in a research paper that they had spent less than USD 6 million on computing power to train the chatbot. Al Jazeera said that some sceptics have challenged DeepSeek’s model of working on a small budget, suggesting that the start-up likely had access to more advanced chips and more funding than it has acknowledged.
