South Korea has taken steps regarding a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, DeepSeek, which has paused the downloads of its chatbot apps in the country. This decision comes as the company addresses privacy concerns raised by South Korean officials.
The Personal Information Protection Commission in South Korea announced that DeepSeek’s applications were removed from local versions of both the Apple App Store and Google Play over the weekend. The company is cooperating with the agency to enhance privacy protections before the apps can be relaunched.
Current users of DeepSeek who have already downloaded the app will still be able to access it on their devices. However, Nam Seok, the director of the commission’s investigation division, has advised users to consider deleting the app or to refrain from sharing any personal information until the concerns are adequately resolved.
In light of these privacy issues, several South Korean government bodies and companies have blocked DeepSeek from their networks or have restricted employee usage of the app. This move stems from concerns that the AI might be collecting sensitive data without proper oversight.
The South Korean commission began its review of DeepSeek’s services last month and discovered that the company lacked transparency in how it handled third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information. While the commission has not disclosed the exact number of DeepSeek users in South Korea, a study by Wiseapp Retail suggested that around 1.2 million smartphone users were utilizing the app at the end of January, making it the second most popular AI model after ChatGPT.
