South Korea has accused Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek of sharing consumer knowledge with the proprietor of TikTok in China.
“We confirmed DeepSeek speaking with ByteDance,” the South Korean knowledge safety regulator advised Yonhap Information Company.
The nation had already eliminated DeepSeek from app shops over the weekend over knowledge safety issues.
The Chinese language app brought about shockwaves within the AI world in January, wiping billions off international inventory markets over claims its new mannequin was skilled at a a lot decrease price than US rivals comparable to ChatGPT.
Since then, a number of nations have warned that consumer knowledge will not be correctly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity firm alleged potential knowledge sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.
DeepSeek’s obvious in a single day affect noticed it shoot to the highest of App Retailer charts within the UK, US and lots of different nations all over the world – though it now sits far beneath ChatGPT in UK rankings.
In South Korea, it had been downloaded over 1,000,000 instances earlier than being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Shops on Saturday night.
Current customers can nonetheless entry the app and apply it to an online browser.
The information regulator, the Private Info Safety Fee (PIPC), advised South Korea’s Yonhap Information Company that regardless of discovering a hyperlink between DeepSeek and ByteDance, it was “but to substantiate what knowledge was transferred and to what extent”.
Critics of the Chinese language state have lengthy argued its Nationwide Intelligence Legislation permits the federal government to entry any knowledge it desires from Chinese language corporations.
Nonetheless, ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, is owned by numerous international traders – and others say the identical regulation permits for the safety of personal corporations and private knowledge.
Fears over consumer knowledge being despatched to China was one of many causes the US Supreme Court docket upheld a ban on TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance.
The US ban is on maintain till 5 April as President Donald Trump makes an attempt to dealer a decision.
Cybersecurity firm Safety Scorecard printed a weblog on DeepSeek on 10 February which prompt “a number of direct references to ByteDance-owned” providers.
“These references recommend deep integration with ByteDance’s analytics and efficiency monitoring infrastructure,” it stated in its evaluation of DeepSeek’s Android app.
Safety Scorecard expressed concern that together with privateness dangers, DeepSeek “consumer behaviour and machine metadata [are] probably despatched to ByteDance servers”.
It additionally discovered knowledge “being transmitted to domains linked to Chinese language state-owned entities”.
On Monday, South Korea’s PIPC stated it “discovered site visitors generated by third-party knowledge transfers and inadequate transparency in DeepSeek’s privateness coverage”.
It stated DeepSeek was cooperating with the regulator, and acknowledged it had did not to keep in mind South Korean privateness legal guidelines.
However the regulator suggested customers “train warning and keep away from getting into private data into the chatbot”.
South Korea has already adopted numerous nations comparable to Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from authorities gadgets.
The NUZTO has contacted the PIPC, ByteDance and DeepSeek’s guardian firm, Excessive Flyer, for a response.
