South Korea: DeepSeek removed from app stores after failure on compliance to data protection rules

Seoul [South Korea], February 18 (ANI): South Korea's Personal Information Commission said that DeepSeek has accepted the proposal to suspend downloads of the AI Chatbot after it acknowledged that DeepSeek had failed to comply with the personal data protection rules, Al Jazeera reported.
As per Al Jazeera, DeepSeek's R1 chatbot was removed from the local versions of Apple's App Store and Google Play after it acknowledged that it had failed to comply with personal data protection rules.
However, the chatbot is still available for those who have already downloaded the app.
"To prevent further concerns from spreading, the commission recommended that DeepSeek temporarily suspend its service while making the necessary improvements," the commission said, as reported by Al Jazeera.
The move comes after the Commission said last month that it would send a written request to DeepSeek seeking details about how it manages users' personal data.
Notably, South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy earlier this month announced a temporary ban on employees using DeepSeek on their devices, citing security concerns.
Several countries across the world have expressed their apprehensions towards DeepSeek AI.
Al Jazeera noted that earlier Australia and Taiwan had banned the chatbot on government devices, while the US Congress is considering a bill to implement a similar ban.
Italy's data protection agency had also ordered DeepSeek to limit the processing of Italian users' data pending further information about how it is managed.
DeepSeek came into limelight last month when it announced that it had developed its chatbot at a tiny fraction of the cost of models created by tech giants such as Google and OpenAI.
Where at one end, DeepSeek's rival companies had poured billions of dollars into their AI models, Al Jazeera reported that R1's development team said in a research paper that they had spent less than USD 6 million on computing power to train the chatbot.
Al Jazeera said that some sceptics have challenged DeepSeek's model of working on a small budget, suggesting that the start-up likely had access to more advanced chips and more funding than it has acknowledged. (ANI)