Which Countries Decided to Ban DeepSeek, & Why?

What distinguishes DeepSeek from ChatGPT and other similar programs?

It is far less expensive to build, according to its developers.

When DeepSeek revealed in a December article that “training” the most recent model of DeepSeek—which involves selecting and entering the data it needs to answer questions—would take less than $6 million in processing power from Nvidia H800 chips, the business sent shockwaves through the AI community.

US tech titans like OpenAI for ChatGPT and US-owned Google for Gemini have multibillion-dollar AI expenditures, which is a fraction of this. As published by Wired in April 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the training of the company’s most recent program, GPT-4, cost over $100 million.

On January 20, the new DeepSeek program was made available to the public. The DeepSeek app has already topped the Apple App Store chart by January 27. The consequence was a 17 percent drop in share price, which cost the American multinational Nvidia, which has a near-monopoly on producing processors for generative AI, close to $600 billion in market capitalization.

Which countries have banned DeepSeek’s AI initiative?

Some governments are attempting to prohibit its employees from using AI software, or have already done so in a number of nations. Among them are:

United States

US politicians are preparing to draft a bill to ban DeepSeek from government-owned devices, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Thursday.

DeepSeek was barred from accessing NASA’s networks and staff members’ devices on January 31. In an email sent a week prior, the US Navy cautioned its members against using DeepSeek due to “possible security and ethical concerns associated with the model’s origin and usage,” according to CNBC.

South Korea

On Wednesday, a representative for the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy declared that the industry ministry had temporarily banned DeepSeek from being used on staff members’ devices due to security concerns.

The government, according to officials, cautioned ministries and agencies on Tuesday about the use of AI programs in general, such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

This followed Seoul’s Personal Information Protection Commission, which oversees information privacy, announcing on January 31 that it will write to DeepSeek to obtain information about how users’ personal data is handled.

The South Korean government’s Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power announced last month that it had prohibited its employees’ devices from using AI services, including DeepSeek.

Australia

Due to “security risks,” the Australian government declared on Tuesday that it has disabled access to DeepSeek on all government-owned devices.

The secretary of the Department of Home Affairs issued a statement on Tuesday requiring this restriction for all government agencies. “Prevent the use or installation of DeepSeek products, applications, and web services and where found remove all existing instances of DeepSeek products, applications, and web services from all Australian Government systems and devices,” the statement instructed all federal agencies.

According to Australian media reports, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke stated that the prohibition was put in place “to protect Australia’s national security and national interest.”

Italy

The Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante) declared on January 30 that it had ordered DeepSeek to “limit processing of Italian users’ data” due to the company’s failure to disclose the potential uses of user-provided personal data.

Two days prior, the Garante had declared that it was looking for information regarding the way the Chinese startup handled and maintained customer data.

Taiwan

Taiwan banned DeepSeek programs from government agencies on Monday, citing security concerns as justification.

Why is the usage of DeepSeek prohibited in some Countries?

The majority of nations that restrict DeepSeek programs claim to be worried about the security threats the Chinese app poses. Additionally, they claim that they lack sufficient knowledge on the group’s plans for storing and using user personal data.

DeepSeek’s privacy policy states that it gathers the following information from users:

• To register for the application, users must provide personal information such as their date of birth, password, phone number, and email address.
• Text or audio inputs made by the user to the chatbot are included in the application’s chat history.
• Technical details about the user’s device and network, including operating system, IP address, and typing habits.

Service providers and advertising partners are informed of this information. According to the company’s website, this data is kept “as long as necessary.”

The privacy policy of ChatGPT states that OpenAI also gathers device information, including IP address, input sent to the chatbot, and personal information, including name and contact details provided at registration, “for as long as we need.” The affiliates of OpenAI may also receive this information.

DeepSeek “has code hidden in its programming which has the built-in capability to send user data directly to the Chinese government,” according to a report by Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot Security, a cybersecurity company based in Ontario, which ABC News published on Wednesday.

According to Tsarynny, the DeepSeek software can transmit user information to “CMPassport.com, the online registry for China Mobile, a telecommunications company owned and operated by the Chinese government,” ABC reported. Al Jazeera has not been able to independently verify this claim.

Does this Practice Seem Unusual?

According to Eddy Borges-Rey, an associate professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar, “almost all major tech companies – from Meta to Google to OpenAI – exploit user data to some extent,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They use data for targeted advertising, algorithmic refinement and AI training. Many have been fined or investigated for privacy breaches, but they continue operating because their activities are somewhat regulated within jurisdictions like the EU and the US,” he added.

Borges-Rey explained that Chinese platforms such as DeepSeek are “treated differently by the West because they are seen as operating under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government, which has laws [such as the National Intelligence Law] that theoretically allow state access to corporate data”.

He added, “Western governments fear that user data collected by Chinese platforms could be used for espionage, influence operations, or surveillance. Whether this is happening in practice is debatable, but the mere possibility is enough to justify bans from a national security perspective.”

By contrast, Western applications are not perceived as a national security threat by Western governments. “Western companies are often seen as problematic but fixable through regulation, whereas Chinese companies are seen as direct security threats requiring bans.”

ChatGPT raised questions in 2023 about possible violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union. The service was temporarily disabled for all users in Italy on April 1. OpenAI claimed to have “addressed or clarified” the concerns brought out by the Garante when ChatGPT was reinstated in Italy on April 28, 2023. It “welcomed the measures OpenAI implemented,” the Garante informed the BBC.

Article Link: www.aljazeera.com