Italy moves to ban DeepSeek amid data privacy concerns

Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek's inadequate disclosures of user data utilization have prompted the Italian Data Protection Agency Garante to prohibit the use of the AI chatbot, which has gained traction due to its touted capabilities, across the country, Security Affairs reports.

Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence, which support the chatbot service, have been sought by Garante to provide details not only on the types of gathered personal information, used sources, and server locations but also the purpose and legal basis of such data gathering process within 20 days. Additional information regarding DeepSeek's user notifications, web scraping practices, and training process should also be given by the AI firm, according to Garante. DeepSeek noted that it is not subject to European regulations due to the absence of operations in the region. Such a development comes nearly two years after ChatGPT was temporarily blocked by Garante due to unlawful data collection practices.