The International DeepSeek Crackdown Is Underway

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Apparently, no Chinese breakthrough goes unpunished. It’s been about one week since Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek released its DeepSeek-R1 model that managed to rival the performance of American offerings for a fraction of the cost, and now the rest of the world is looking to put the firm under the microscope. Per the Wall Street Journal, Italy’s data privacy watchdog announced Thursday that it is launching a probe into how DeepSeek is handling user data—an investigation that follows in the footsteps of a number of nations that are cracking down on the company.

The Italian Data Protection Authority issued a restraining order against both Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence, the two Chinese companies behind the ChatGPT rival. The watchdog agency raised concerns over DeepSeek’s failure to disclose what personal information it collects, how it processes that data, and whether or not that information is being stored on servers in China. Access to DeepSeek has been blocked in Italy as the investigation is underway.

Italy isn’t the only country with concerns. Taiwan’s digital ministry advised government officials not to use DeepSeek over security concerns including potential data leakage. South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission announced that it plans to question DeepSeek over how it manages the personal information of users. France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties plans to probe the AI firm over data protection practices, while Belgium is looking into potential GDPR violations and Ireland is asking for more details on how DeepSeek handles data.

And of course, it wouldn’t be a crackdown if America didn’t get involved. Per Reuters, the US Commerce Department is reportedly investigating if DeepSeek has been secretly using American-made chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China.

That seems about right, frankly. The rest of the world is looking into privacy issues and America wants to know if this thing is going to hurt the bottom line of its own firms like Nvidia, which saw its stock price take a tumble as soon as word hit the market that you don’t need to spend billions of dollars to make a functional AI model. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will be meeting with Trump in Washington, D.C. Friday, and the two will surely discuss ways to protect the company’s profits from foreign threats like DeepSeek.

There is good reason to have concerns over DeepSeek’s data privacy practices—as there are with basically every firm that wants to get its hands on your information. Security firm Wiz Research recently published a report warning that a database belonging to DeepSeek was left exposed and revealed chat histories and other potentially sensitive information, and Wired reported that the AI app is sending US user data to servers in China. If you’re worried about who is accessing your personal information, it’s probably best to avoid all AI apps, whether they are made by a Chinese firm or otherwise.

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