The Privacy Commission says it has accepted a proposal accepted by a Chinese startup to suspend AI chatbot downloads.
South Korea has stopped downloading Deepseek’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbots as it awaits review of privacy standards for Chinese startups.
South Korea’s Privacy Watchdog said on Monday that Deepseek’s R1 chatbot has been removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
The Privacy Commission said in a statement that Deepseek has accepted the proposal to suspend downloads of the app.
Chatbots are available to people who have already downloaded the app.
“To prevent further concerns from spreading, the committee recommended that DeepSeek temporarily suspend services while making necessary improvements,” the committee said, bringing apps in line with local regulations. added that “it will take quite a bit of time.”
Deepseek did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
The move comes after Privacy Watchdog said last month it would send a written request to DeepSeek for details on how it will manage users’ personal data.
The South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced a temporary ban on employees using DeepSeek on their devices, citing security concerns.
Australia and Taiwan have banned chatbots on government devices, but the US Congress is considering a bill to implement a similar ban.
The Italian Data Protection Agency has ordered DeepSeek to limit the processing of Italian users’ data and to hold off more information on how it is managed.
Deepseek exploded on Limelight last month when it announced it had developed a chatbot for a small fraction of the costs of models created by tech giants such as Google and Openai.
Deepseek’s Silicon Valley rivals are pouring billions into AI models, but the R1 development team spent less than $6 million on computing power to train chatbots, according to a research paper. Ta.
The announcement almost immediately raised existential questions about Silicon Valley’s business model of investing heavily in AI.
Investors on Deepseek’s impact on the AI industry last month wiped out roughly $1 trillion in a day from the market value of so-called “magnificent seven” high-tech companies.
Some skeptics are challenging Deepseek’s explanation of the Shoestring budget, suggesting that they are likely to have access to more advanced tipping and more funds than the startups have admitted. Masu.