DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has temporarily halted downloads of its chatbot apps in South Korea as it works with local regulators to address privacy concerns, South Korean officials said Monday.
According to South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission, DeepSeek's apps were pulled from the local versions of Apple's App Store and Google Play on Saturday evening, and the business committed to work with the government to tighten privacy precautions before relaunching the apps.
Users who have already downloaded or used DeekSeek on their phones or personal computers are unaffected by the action. Nam Seok, director of the South Korean commission's investigation branch, encouraged South Korean DeepSeek users to either erase the program from their smartphones or avoid providing personal information.
Many South Korean government agencies and companies have either blocked DeepSeek from their networks or prohibited employees from using the app for work, amid worries that the AI model was gathering too much sensitive information, reports AP.
The South Korean privacy commission, which began reviewing DeepSeek’s services last month, found that the company lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information, Nam said.
Nam said the commission did not have an estimate on the number of DeepSeek users in South Korea. A recent analysis by Wiseapp Retail found that DeepSeek was used by about 1.2 million smartphone users in South Korea during the fourth week of January, emerging as the second-most-popular AI model behind ChatGPT.
