South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing consumer records with the proprietor of TikTok in China.
“We confirmed DeepSeek speaking with ByteDance,” the South Korean data protection regulator instructed Yonhap News Agency.
The u . S . A . Had already removed DeepSeek from app shops over the weekend over records protection worries.
The Chinese app caused shockwaves inside the AI world in January, wiping billions off global inventory markets over claims its new model become trained at a far lower price than US competitors which include ChatGPT.
Since then, multiple countries have warned that person information won’t be well blanketed, and in February a US cybersecurity enterprise alleged potential data sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.
DeepSeek’s obvious in a single day impact saw it shoot to the top of App Store charts within the UK, US and plenty of other international locations round the sector – although it now sits far underneath ChatGPT in UK ratings.
In South Korea, it have been downloaded over one million times before being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Stores on Saturday nighttime.
Existing users can nonetheless get right of entry to the app and use it on a web browser.
The information regulator, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), advised South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency that regardless of finding a hyperlink among DeepSeek and ByteDance, it become “yet to confirm what data became transferred and to what extent”.
Critics of the Chinese kingdom have lengthy argued its National Intelligence Law permits the government to access any data it desires from Chinese corporations.
However, ByteDance, established in Beijing, is owned by way of some of international traders – and others say the same law lets in for the safety of personal groups and personal records.
Fears over person records being sent to China was one of the motives the USA Supreme Court upheld a ban on TikTok, that’s owned via ByteDance.
The US ban is on keep until 5 April as President Donald Trump attempts to broking a resolution.
‘Exercise caution’
Cybersecurity organisation Security Scorecard posted a blog on DeepSeek on 10 February which recommended “multiple direct references to ByteDance-owned” offerings.
“These references advocate deep integration with ByteDance’s analytics and performance monitoring infrastructure,” it said in its review of DeepSeek’s Android app.
Security Scorecard expressed situation that together with privateness risks, DeepSeek “consumer behaviour and device metadata [are] probable sent to ByteDance servers”.
It additionally discovered facts “being transmitted to domains related to Chinese kingdom-owned entities”.
On Monday, South Korea’s PIPC said it “found out traffic generated by third-party data transfers and insufficient transparency in DeepSeek’s privacy policy”.
It said DeepSeek turned into cooperating with the regulator, and mentioned it had did not to don’t forget South Korean privacy legal guidelines.
But the regulator cautioned users “exercise caution and keep away from entering personal records into the chatbot”.
South Korea has already accompanied a number of countries such as Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from government devices.
