South Korea blocks DeepSeek downloads over data use concerns

Feb. 17 (UPI) -- South Korea's digital watchdog temporarily banned downloads of the Chinese-based DeepSeek artificial intelligence app from app stores in the country until it can learn more about how the company handles user data.

The Personal Information Protection Commission said that the Chinese AI Lab must comply with South Korean privacy laws before it can be approved to be downloaded again. The commission said the ruling will not affect existing apps and web services in South Korea.

The commission said it contacted the Chinese AI Lab after DeepSeek service was started in South Korea in January and found issues with the company's third-party and privacy policies. It also learned that DeepSeek had transferred South Korean user data to ByteDance, the parent of TikTok.

While DeepSeek has drawn plenty of scrutiny, it has also proven to be wildly popular in South Korea, swiftly becoming the top downloaded app in the country after its first week with more than one million users.

That was enough to catch the attention of South Korean regulators amid concerns that such Chinese-based apps, like TikTok, can share data with the Chinese government.

In January, Italy's digital information watchdog, the Data Protection Authority, called for the government to block DeepSeek in the country and to stop processing data of Italians until it could conduct its own investigation on how it handles users' data.

Ireland was also investigating DeepSeek.