On Saturday, South Korean officials temporarily restricted the Chinese AI Lab Deepseek app from being downloaded from domestic app stores, waiting to be evaluated for how Chinese companies process user data.
The Privacy Commission (PIPC) said that Chinese apps can be downloaded if they comply with South Korea’s privacy laws and make necessary changes.
The restrictions do not affect the use of existing apps and web services within the country. However, data protection authorities said they are “strongly advising” current users not to enter personal information into DeepSeek until a final decision is made.
Following the release of Deepseek services in Korea in late January, PIPC reached out to AI labs in China to ask how they collect and process personal data, and in its assessment, it recognised Deepseek’s third-party services and privacy. He said he discovered the problem. policy.
PICC confirmed to TechCrunch that its investigation confirmed that DeepSeek had transferred data from Korean users to Bytedance, the parent company of Tiktok.
Deepseek did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The agency said Deepseek recently appointed a local representative in South Korea and admitted that he was not familiar with South Korea’s privacy laws when it launched its service. Chinese companies also said last Friday they would work closely with South Korean authorities.
Earlier this month, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry, Energy, police and state-owned companies, Korea Hydropower and Nuclear Power temporarily blocked access to official devices China’s AI startups citing security concerns. .
Korea is not the only country that has been cautious about Deepshek given its Chinese origins. Australia has banned the use of DeepSeek on government devices due to security concerns. Galante, the Italian data protection agency, has directed Deepseek to block chatbots in the country, but Taiwan has banned the government department from using Deepseek AI.
Hangzhou City-based Deepseek has released the Deepseek R1, a free, open source inference AI model founded by Liang Feng in 2023 and competes with Openai’s ChatGpt.
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