South Korea Confirms DeepSeek Was Banned After It Sent User Data To ByteDance

DeepSeek may have made a lot of heads turn after it released AI models that many felt were superior to OpenAI at a fraction of the cost. However, the fame is slowly dwindling down thanks to some questionable findings.

The latest nation to ban the Chinese Startup is South Korea which confirmed that the decision was taken after it sent user data to TikTok’s parent firm ByteDance. This news comes days after we saw the PIPC share that new downloads of the app were suspended after it failed to consider the agency’s rules on data protection.

The company did set up a legal team to probe the matter in South Korea where it acknowledged its neglected actions towards the country’s data laws. Now the question still arises about which data was sent and to what kind of extent.

Under this law from South Korea, explicit content is needed from users if the matter has to do with personal information given to third parties. DeepSeek was installed close to more than one million times before it was removed from various app stores this past weekend.

We’ve seen the data protection authority Garante also order a probe and block the chatbot after it could not defend the concerns of the regulator linked to privacy policies. So far, critics from China have long mentioned how the nation’s National Intelligence Law provides the government full access to all data it needs from companies in China if they’re investigating threats related to national security issues or major offenses.

The context of this law in China is nearly identical to how the US handles issues such as data protection. Many businesses in America will need to cooperate with the authorities if and when asked to do so.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World