(TibetanReview.net, Feb20’25) – DeepSeek, China’s propaganda AI chatbot, appears to be headed for the fate of the country’s TikTok short video app – highly popular among ordinary folks, but restricted from use on government devices, with likelihood of being banned nationwide for endangering national security and over privacy concerns.
The data privacy and security concerns raised over DeepSeek use and the ban that followed in South Korea and other countries echoes the fate that TikTok, another Chinese app, met in several countries, reported indiatoday.in Feb 18.
DeepSeek, which became the most downloaded app in the US to surpass ChatGPT, has been lauded for its speed, efficiency, and mighty reasoning skills. But the open-source generative AI model has now landed in hot waters with countries raising the same concerns they had with TikTok.
The report noted that TikTok, a video-creating platform which turned many normal people into social media influencers and stars even bigger than movie celebrities, has faced a similar ban in India and other countries over security concerns. A decision on its future in the United States is pending after President Donald Trump ordered a 75-day pause on the ban’s enforcement to determine if he could work out a deal to have ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, divest from the app. Countries like Taiwan, Canada, Pakistan, New Zealand have either banned the app or restricted its use.
South Korea announced Feb 17 that it was banning the Chinese alternative to ChatGPT over national security concerns, becoming only the latest country to do so, albeit temporarily.
Countries that consider DeepSeek ban have raised national security concerns over fears that its AI models could be used by the Chinese government to spy on people in their countries, learn proprietary secrets, and wage influence campaigns.
There are also concerns over data collection. The company’s privacy policy states that it automatically collects a slew of input data from its users, including IP addresses and keystroke patterns, and may use that to train their models. Users’ personal information is stated to be stored in “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
“DeepSeek could pose a greater threat to national security than TikTok“, the report quoted Allie Mellen, a senior analyst with Forrester, as saying. She has pointed out that DeepSeek’s privacy policy explicitly states it can collect “your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content” and use it for training purposes.
“It also states it can share this information with law enforcement agencies, public authorities, and so forth at its discretion, and that any information collected is stored in China,” she has told TechNewsWorld.
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Rich Vibert, CEO of Metomic, a data privacy and security software company, has noted that while both DeepSeek and TikTok raise concerns about data security, their risks are distinct.
“Concerns around TikTok focus on the scale of data collection, with fears around where and how that data is stored,” he has explained. “DeepSeek, however, represents a more targeted risk, as it appears to be designed to identify and exploit vulnerabilities on a massive scale.”
DeepSeek is also faulted for misinformation, censorship, and propaganda. The report said several users were alarmed to find that DeepSeek’s R1 refuses to answer questions about certain topics like the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, and asserts that Taiwan is a part of China. Some American leaders have raised concerns about DeepSeek being used to promote Chinese values and political aims—or wielded as a tool for espionage or cyberattacks.
“This technology, if unchecked, has the potential to feed disinformation campaigns, erode public trust, and entrench authoritarian narratives within our democracies,” Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience, has told TIME.
Many experts have noted that the app echoes TikTok ban as it raises privacy and security risks.
“This has the echoes of the TikTok ban: there are legitimate privacy and security risks with the way these companies are operating,” Ben Winters, the director of AI and data privacy at the Consumer Federation of America, has said.
South Korea suspended new downloads of DeepSeek due to concerns over personal data protection.
In the USA, lawmakers have proposed a bill to ban DeepSeek from federal devices over surveillance concerns. At the state level, Texas, Virginia, and New York have already implemented similar restrictions for government employees, the report noted.
At the federal level, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said In her first press briefing that the National Security Council was “looking into” the potential security implications of DeepSeek. This followed the news that the US Navy had banned its use among its ranks due to “potential security and ethical concerns.”
Australia banned DeepSeek from all government devices and systems in the first week of February over the security risk the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup poses.
Taiwan has also blocked government departments from using DeepSeek programmes, citing security and other risks.
The report concluded that even as China continues to defend DeepSeek and encourages its use, the chatbot seems on path to meet the same fate as TikTok amid emerging national security and data privacy concerns.