Private Info Safety Fee says AI mannequin despatched private information to Beijing-based cloud service.
South Korea’s information safety watchdog has accused DeepSeek, the Chinese language start-up whose synthetic intelligence-powered chatbot took the tech scene by storm earlier this yr, of transferring private information with out customers’ consent.
The Private Info Safety Fee stated on Thursday that DeepSeek had been transferring info to a number of corporations in China and america earlier than its ChatGPT-like AI mannequin was faraway from app shops in February, pending a privateness evaluation.
Nam Seok, director of the fee’s investigation bureau, stated throughout a information convention that the app had despatched consumer prompts and gadget and community info to a Beijing-based cloud service known as Volcano Engine.
DeepSeek “acknowledged it had insufficiently thought-about Korea’s information safety legal guidelines” and “expressed its willingness to cooperate with the fee, and voluntarily suspended new downloads”, Nam stated.
DeepSeek didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Following the South Korean watchdog’s announcement, China’s Ministry of Overseas Affairs stated it positioned a excessive degree of significance on information privateness and safety.
“We have now by no means – and can by no means – require corporations or people to gather or retailer information via unlawful means,” ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated throughout an everyday information convention.
DeepSeek’s R1 induced a sensation in January after its builders launched a analysis paper claiming they spent lower than $6m on computing energy to coach the mannequin – a fraction of the multibillion-dollar AI budgets of US tech giants resembling OpenAI and Google.
The emergence of a Chinese language startup able to rivalling Silicon Valley’s main gamers challenged assumptions about US dominance in AI and prompted scrutiny of the sky-high market valuations of corporations resembling Nvidia and Meta.
Marc Andreessen, one of the vital influential tech enterprise capitalists in Silicon Valley, hailed DeepSeek’s mannequin as “AI’s Sputnik second”.
