South Korea Watchdog to Question Deepseek over User Data

The Italian Data Protection Authority has halted DeepSeek AI over concerns about its handling of Italians’ private data. Ireland and Belgium have also requested information from the Chinese company regarding the model’s use of European data.

Italian Data Protection Authority Garante has halted processing of Italians’ personal data by DeepSeek because the agency is not satisfied with the Chinese AI model’s claims that it does not fall under purview of EU law.

“Contrary to the Authority’s findings, the companies stated that they do not operate in Italy and that European regulations do not apply to them,” Garante wrote in a press release.

On Tuesday Garante launched an investigation into Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence, giving the companies 20 days to furnish details on how the AI chatbot complies with GDPR, the European data protection law – looking into what data is collected, for what purpose, where it’s being stored and if it has been used to train the AI model.

This block means that DeepSeek will not be available on app stores in Italy. However, the ban could be bypassed online through use of virtual private networks.

In April 2023, ChatGPT, OpenAI’s US chatbot, was also banned by Garante over privacy violations for a month. It resulted in a €15 million fine.

As DeepSeek’s parent companies are not legally established in any member states, data protection authorities in all 26 other members can receive complaints and launch an investigation into them.

So far, only Belgian and Irish data protection authorities opened a probes requesting information from DeepSeek on the processing and storage of their citizens’ data, though more countries could follow suit.