South Korea has accused Chinese language AI startup DeepSeek of sharing person 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 considerations.
The Chinese language app prompted shockwaves within the AI world in January, wiping billions off world inventory markets over claims its new mannequin was educated at a a lot decrease price than US rivals akin to ChatGPT.
Since then, a number of nations have warned that person knowledge is probably not correctly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity firm alleged potential knowledge sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.
DeepSeek’s obvious in a single day influence noticed it shoot to the highest of App Retailer charts within the UK, US and plenty of different nations world wide – though it now sits far under ChatGPT in UK rankings.
In South Korea, it had been downloaded over one million occasions earlier than being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Shops on Saturday night.
Present customers can nonetheless entry the app and apply it to an internet 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 verify what knowledge was transferred and to what extent”.
Critics of the Chinese language state have lengthy argued its Nationwide Intelligence Regulation permits the federal government to entry any knowledge it desires from Chinese language corporations.
Nevertheless, ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, is owned by plenty of world buyers – and others say the identical regulation permits for the safety of personal corporations and private knowledge.
Fears over person 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 revealed a weblog on DeepSeek on 10 February which prompt “a number of direct references to ByteDance-owned” providers.
“These references counsel deep integration with ByteDance’s analytics and efficiency monitoring infrastructure,” it stated in its assessment of DeepSeek’s Android app.
Safety Scorecard expressed concern that together with privateness dangers, DeepSeek “person behaviour and system metadata [are] possible 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 “came upon 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 didn’t to bear in mind South Korean privateness legal guidelines.
However the regulator suggested customers “train warning and keep away from coming into private data into the chatbot”.
South Korea has already adopted plenty of nations akin to Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from authorities units.
The RAYNAE has contacted the PIPC, ByteDance and DeepSeek’s mum or dad firm, Excessive Flyer, for a response.
