South Korea pauses DeepSeek’s download amid privacy concerns

The download of Chinese AI, DeepSeek‘s chatbot app has temporarily been paused in South Korea. According to the country’s authorities, the company has agreed to work with local authorities to address several privacy concerns. 

The development has seen DeepSeek’s app removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Saturday evening. This will enable South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission to work with the Chinese company to reassess and strengthen privacy protections before relaunching the apps.

However, the temporary download ban does not affect users who have already downloaded DeepSeek on their phones or used it on personal computers. The action only bans new downloads. 

The director of the South Korean commission’s investigation division, Nam Seok, however, advised users of DeepSeek in the Asian country to be wary of using the app to avoid exposing their personal information.

He encouraged them to delete the app and wait while the authorities resolve various privacy threats the app possesses. 

Within the worries that the AI chatbot is gathering too much sensitive information, the development follows recent moves by many South Korean government agencies and companies to either block DeepSeek from their networks or prohibit employees from using the app for work.  

According to Nam, the South Korean privacy regulator found that the Chinese company’s transparency in its operations is questionable. The privacy commission, which began reviewing DeepSeek’s services last month, also noted that DeepSeek harbours third-party data transfers and potentially collects excessive personal information.

The commission noted that it did not have an estimate on the number of DeepSeek users in South Korea but a recent analysis by Wiseapp Retail found that DeepSeek was deployed by about 1.2 million smartphone users in South Korea during the fourth week of January. The report made the app the second-most-popular AI model behind ChatGPT.

The recent wave of DeepSeek has seen the app downloaded at least 16 million times worldwide, making it the most downloaded app in 140 countries. 

Also Read: Alibaba refutes $1 billion DeepSeek investment claim.

DeepSeek’s privacy concerns

After the launch of its R1 model, Chinese AI became the talk of the tech world. Its R1’s functionality and accuracy compared to its U.S. counterparts seems like a win for the overall AI industry, despite using fewer resources and less computing power.

Meanwhile, the tech world’s biggest worry about DeepSeek is its potential data leakage to the Chinese government. Recall that TikTok, a subsidiary of China’s ByteDane, currently faces the same security concerns in the U.S. and across several countries.

According to DeepSeek’s privacy policy, the company stores all user data in China, where local laws mandate organizations to share data with intelligence officials upon request. 

This threat has resulted in the banning of its usage across government agencies and several other countries. 

In early February, the American State of Texas banned the Chinese open-source AI model which prohibits state employees from downloading, installing, or using Deepseek or several other notable Chinese apps on government-sanctioned devices.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who raised data privacy and national security concerns in a proclamation on the Texas state website, prohibited state workers from interacting with Chinese AI and social media apps, including DeepSeek, RedNote, and Lemon8, on state-owned devices. 

“Texas will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our state’s critical infrastructure through data-harvesting AI and social media apps. Texas will continue to protect and defend our state from hostile foreign actors,” Governor Abbott said.

Like the American State of Texas, which is the first state to ban the open-source AI chatbot in the U.S., the U.S. Navy, Congress, the Pentagon, the Finance Ministry, and NASA have also banned the use of the AI app, all similarly citing privacy and security concerns.

Several other countries such as Italy, Taiwan, and Australia have also followed suit while it faces ban risk in other regions such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, and some European Union countries.