South Korea has accused Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek of sharing consumer knowledge with the proprietor of TikTok in China.
“We confirmed DeepSeek speaking with ByteDance,” the South Korean knowledge safety regulator informed Yonhap Information Company.
The nation had already eliminated DeepSeek from app shops over the weekend over knowledge safety considerations.
The Chinese language app precipitated shockwaves within the AI world in January, wiping billions off international inventory markets over claims its new mannequin was educated at a a lot decrease price than US rivals corresponding to ChatGPT.
Since then, a number of international locations have warned that consumer knowledge is probably not correctly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity firm alleged potential knowledge sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.
DeepSeek’s obvious in a single day influence noticed it shoot to the highest of App Retailer charts within the UK, US and plenty of different international locations world wide – though it now sits far under ChatGPT in UK rankings.
In South Korea, it had been downloaded over 1,000,000 instances earlier than being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Shops on Saturday night.
Current customers can nonetheless entry the app and apply it to an internet browser.
The info regulator, the Private Data Safety Fee (PIPC), informed South Korea’s Yonhap Information Company that regardless of discovering a hyperlink between DeepSeek and ByteDance, it was “but to substantiate what knowledge was transferred and to what extent”.
Critics of the Chinese language state have lengthy argued its Nationwide Intelligence Legislation permits the federal government to entry any knowledge it desires from Chinese language firms.
Nonetheless, ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, is owned by quite a few international traders – and others say the identical legislation permits for the safety of personal firms and private knowledge.
Fears over consumer knowledge being despatched to China was one of many causes the US Supreme Court docket upheld a ban on TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance.
The US ban is on maintain till 5 April as President Donald Trump makes an attempt to dealer a decision.
Cybersecurity firm Safety Scorecard revealed a weblog on DeepSeek on 10 February which advised “a number of direct references to ByteDance-owned” providers.
“These references recommend deep integration with ByteDance’s analytics and efficiency monitoring infrastructure,” it mentioned in its evaluate of DeepSeek’s Android app.
Safety Scorecard expressed concern that together with privateness dangers, DeepSeek “consumer behaviour and gadget metadata [are] possible despatched to ByteDance servers”.
It additionally discovered knowledge “being transmitted to domains linked to Chinese language state-owned entities”.
On Monday, South Korea’s PIPC mentioned it “came upon site visitors generated by third-party knowledge transfers and inadequate transparency in DeepSeek’s privateness coverage”.
It mentioned DeepSeek was cooperating with the regulator, and acknowledged it had didn’t to take into consideration South Korean privateness legal guidelines.
However the regulator suggested customers “train warning and keep away from coming into private info into the chatbot”.
South Korea has already adopted quite a few international locations corresponding to Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from authorities units.
The BBC has contacted the PIPC, ByteDance and DeepSeek’s dad or mum firm, Excessive Flyer, for a response.
