Deepseek Shutdown – AI Tech Wars or Real Privacy Concerns?
Deepseek became the favorite AI chatbot within just 48 hours of its launch. Its performance rivaled (and even surpassed) Chatgpt on several benchmarks. The latest report is that the Italian Data Protection Authority Garante has moved to ban the App.
There are also speculations that other countries like the US, South Korea, Taiwan, Ireland, France, and Australia are currently investigating whether or not to go ahead with the Deepseek ban.
Why Was Deepseek banned?
The Italian Data Protection Authority claimed that the app was banned due to
“insufficient information and storage practices”
Stoking fears that the Chinese government may have access to the personal data of its users. Deepseek has openly stated that its data storage servers are within China. As a result, the app has been blocked in both Google and Apple Playstore for Italians.
The app is less than a month old in the app store and we already have a ban? What is really going on?
For context, TikTop – another Chinese company with its storage servers inside China – operated in the US and European countries without so much alarm about privacy. TikTop was only recently banned in the US.
One may speculate that it is beyond just data.
DeepSeek Threat to Other OpenAI and other US-based AI firms
The launch of Deepseek had a profound impact on the US AI Industry. Nvidia stock fell by almost $600 billion. It will be recalled that Deepseek took only 2 months to train, on a budget of $5.5 million – that compared to the $100 billion to train OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
To top that, Deepseek is free, and open source and you can run it on your local device. This raises a lot of concerns about the profitability of the US-based counterparts like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
It is not hard to hard to see why there is so much incentive to restrict the growth and popularity of the Chinese app in the US and other European countries.
There are also concerns about how the Deepseek model was trained. Ironically, OpenAI is accusing Deepseek of stealing its Intellectual Property to train its model. The same OpenAI that violated the rights of publishers, stealing their content, without permission or compensation.
The Deepseek ban (by Italy and possibly other countries soon) is likely another plan to place more hurdles on any Chinese firms to win the AI supremacy race. The US has a standing export restriction on top-grade Graphic cards to China.
It is also possible that the Chinese government is actively funding Deepseek to make sure it surpasses its US counterparts. And that Deepseek is not fully disclosing all the facts concerning the resources they expended in launching their model.
What should you do?
Well if you are a fan of Deepseek, there is a good chance you still have access to the app. Download the Deepseek app before your access is denied. The app is open-source, so you can run it locally on your computer.
You may want to upgrade your device with some Graphic cards to improve its efficiency locally.
It is also good practice to avoid putting sensitive data into any AI app. That is true for Deepseek as well as others like ChatGPT. I would trust none of them with my sensitive data.
See OpenAI And DeepSeek – Why I Have No Sympathies For OpenAI
