Deepseek, a Chinese startup of artificial intelligence, temporarily stopped the download of his Chatbot applications in South Korea, while he cooperates with local authorities to solve the problems related to privacy, said officials from South Korea on Monday.
Korea Data Protection of South Korea said that the Deepseek applications were removed from the local versions of the App Store and Google Play on Saturday evening and that the company agreed to cooperate with the agency to strengthen the privacy protection against restarting the application.
The action does not affect users who have already downloaded Deepseek to their phones or use it on personal computers. Seok, director of the South Korea Investigative Department, advised South Korea Deepseek to remove the application from their devices or avoid entering personal data to the tool until the problems are solved.
Deepseek drew attention all over the world last month, when he claimed that he had built a popular chatbot for a fraction of costs produced by American companies. The resulting frenzy increased markets and fueled debates about the competition between the USA and China in the development of AI technology.
Many government agencies and South Korea companies have either blocked Deepeek from their networks, or forbade employees to use the work application, in the midst of fear that the AI model gathered too much sensitive information.
The South Korean Privacy Committee, which started a review of Deepseek services last month, stated that the company had no transparency about data transfers of other companies and potentially collected excessive personal data, he told us.
He told us that the Commission did not assess the number of Deepseek users in South Korea. A recent analysis carried out by WISEPP Retail showed that Deepseek was used by about 1.2 million smartphone users in South Korea in the fourth week of January, emerging as the second popular AI model for chatgpt.
Chatbot powered by AI from the Chinese company Deepseek became the most downloaded application in North America. His quick entry and low costs disturbed the financial markets and raised concerns among the leaders of American artificial intelligence.