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 informed Yonhap News Agency.
The nation had already removed DeepSeek from app stores over the weekend over knowledge safety issues.
The Chinese language app caused shockwaves within the AI world in January, wiping billions off international inventory markets over claims its new mannequin was educated at a a lot decrease value than US rivals equivalent to ChatGPT.
Since then, a number of nations have warned that person knowledge might not be correctly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity firm alleged potential data 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 beneath ChatGPT in UK rankings.
In South Korea, it had been downloaded over 1,000,000 instances 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 Data Safety Fee (PIPC), informed 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 allows the government to entry any knowledge it needs from Chinese language firms.
Nonetheless, ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, is owned by various international buyers – and others say the identical regulation permits for the safety of personal firms 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 hold until 5 April as President Donald Trump makes an attempt to dealer a decision.
Cybersecurity firm Safety Scorecard published a blog 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 mentioned in its assessment of DeepSeek’s Android app.
Safety Scorecard expressed concern that together with privateness dangers, DeepSeek “person behaviour and gadget metadata [are] doubtless 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 said it “discovered visitors generated by third-party knowledge transfers and inadequate transparency in DeepSeek’s privateness coverage”.
It mentioned DeepSeek was cooperating with the regulator, and acknowledged it had did not to bear in mind South Korean privateness legal guidelines.
However the regulator suggested customers “train warning and keep away from getting into private data into the chatbot”.
South Korea has already adopted various nations equivalent to Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from authorities units.
The BBC has contacted the PIPC, ByteDance and DeepSeek’s dad or mum firm, Excessive Flyer, for a response.
