SEOUL, South Korea — DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has decided to halt the downloads of its chatbot applications in South Korea. This decision comes as the company collaborates with local authorities to address growing privacy issues, according to statements made by South Korean officials on Monday.
The South Korean Personal Information Protection Commission announced that DeepSeek’s applications were removed from the local iterations of Apple’s App Store and Google Play over the weekend. The company has agreed to cooperate with the commission to enhance privacy safeguards before the relaunch of its applications.
This pause in app availability does not impact users who have already downloaded DeepSeek on their mobile devices or use it on their computers. Nam Seok, who leads the investigative division of the commission, has recommended that South Korean users either uninstall the app from their devices or refrain from entering any personal data until the privacy concerns are thoroughly addressed.
DeepSeek garnered global interest last month after announcing that it developed its widely recognized chatbot at a significantly lower cost compared to those produced by American companies. This revelation instigated a widespread frenzy in the market and ignited discussions regarding the competition between the U.S. and China in the AI development arena.
In response to concerns that the AI model may be collecting excessive sensitive information, numerous South Korean governmental organizations and companies have either blocked access to DeepSeek on their networks or prohibited their employees from using the app for professional purposes.
The South Korean privacy commission, which initiated a review of DeepSeek’s services last month, discovered that the company lacked clarity regarding transfers of third-party data and potentially gathered an excessive amount of personal information, as reported by Nam.
Currently, the commission is unable to provide an estimate of the number of DeepSeek users within South Korea. However, an analysis conducted by Wiseapp Retail indicated that approximately 1.2 million smartphone users in the country utilized DeepSeek in the fourth week of January, making it the second-most-popular AI chatbot after ChatGPT.
