South Korea has become the latest country to introduce a ban of the popular Chinese AI app DeepSeek over data protection concerns.
It follows significant pushback against the chatbot, which overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to become the most popular AI app in the US last month.
The sudden popularity prompted concerns about security, privacy and ethics, including DeepSeek’s refusal to answer questions about the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.
South Korea’s data protection authority said new downloads of the app will be blocked until it conducts a review on how users’ personal information is handled.
“DeepSeek] acknowledged that considerations for domestic privacy laws were somewhat lacking,” Seoul’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said.
"To prevent further concerns from spreading, the commission recommended that DeepSeek temporarily suspend its service while making the necessary improvements.”
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The measure that came into force on Saturday aims to block new downloads of the app, the agency said, though DeepSeek's web service remains accessible in the country.
The Chinese startup appointed legal representatives last week in South Korea and had acknowledged partially neglecting considerations of the country's data protection law, the PIPC said.
Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, said last month it had ordered DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country after failing to address the regulator's concerns over its privacy policy.
DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When asked about earlier moves by South Korean government departments to block DeepSeek, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a briefing on 6 February that the Chinese government attached great importance to data privacy and security and protected it in accordance with the law.
The spokesperson also said Beijing would never ask any company or individual to collect or store data in breach of laws.
Earlier this month, lawmakers in the US introduced a bill that would ban people from using the app or interacting with any other artificial intelligence technologies made in China. If the bill passes into law, then anyone breaking it could face up to 20 years in prison.
Australia has also implemented a ban of all DeepSeek products from government devices, citing the app as a “national security risk”.
Additional reporting from agencies.
