South Korea’s knowledge privateness watchdog company, the Private Data Safety Fee (PIPC), stated on Thursday that China’s DeepSeek synthetic intelligence (AI) transferred person knowledge to firms in China and the US with out acquiring correct consent.
DeepSeek is an AI platform whose debut in early 2025 rocked the tech world as a result of it was developed at a fraction of the price of competing merchandise reminiscent of ChatGPT. DeepSeek was briefly one of the downloaded apps on this planet — earlier than cybersecurity analysts identified it was a nightmare mixture of person privateness violations and Chinese language Communist Celebration censorship.
DeepSeek was solely out there for a couple of month in South Korea earlier than the federal government banned it over privateness issues. The PIPC rapidly decided that this system was feeding person knowledge to ByteDance, the controversial Chinese language tech big that created one other infamously intrusive on-line product, TikTok.
PIPC in February requested the DeepSeek startup firm to droop additional downloads of its product in South Korea pending the outcomes of a full investigation and the Chinese language firm complied. The app was not technically banned, however South Korean customers may not obtain it.
“The fee is within the stage of investigation whether or not DeepSeek poses any hurt. A full-scale ban might be controversial earlier than its legal responsibility is formally decided,” PIPC defined in February.
The Chinese language authorities was enraged by South Korea’s motion, accusing Seoul of “politicizing” AI know-how and insisting that Chinese language firms at all times honor international privateness rights and laws — despite the fact that DeepSeek admitted it violated South Korea’s knowledge privateness guidelines.
Chinese language officers insinuated that South Korea was appearing on the behest of the US, because the U.S. Home Choose Committee on the Chinese language Communist Celebration launched a report in late January that discovered DeepSeek’s responses to person queries had been closely edited to evolve to Chinese language Communist ideology. DeepSeek is presently below investigation by the Home Power and Commerce Committee for knowledge privateness points and potential ties to the Chinese language authorities.
South Korea’s investigation discovered that DeepSeek transferred knowledge from as much as 1.5 million customers to 3 firms in China and one in the US between January 15 and February 15, when downloads had been suspended.
In keeping with investigators, DeepSeek despatched details about South Korean computer systems, networks, and software program purposes abroad, along with the content material of the questions they requested the unreal intelligence.
PIPC stated DeepSeek didn’t get hold of person consent for these knowledge transfers, or warn customers about them in its privateness assertion, and it didn’t make use of age verification to make sure it was not taking knowledge from kids below 14 years of age. DeepSeek additionally failed to provide customers an “opt-out” to forestall their questions from being utilized in China’s synthetic intelligence improvement.
PIPC gave DeepSeek ten days to just accept suggestions that may carry it into compliance with South Korean knowledge privateness legal guidelines, and one other 60 days to implement them. The corporate claimed it has already addressed a few of the points. PIPC didn’t provide a timetable for when DeepSeek may have the ability to resume operations in South Korea.
