The News
South Korea blocked downloads of Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek’s chatbot over privacy concerns, as scrutiny grows over China’s burgeoning AI industry.
The Chinese large-language model caused a major stir when it was released last month, after investors saw a potential threat to the dominance of the US’ tech giants.
However, a government probe by South Korea reportedly found that the AI model had sent personal user data to Chinese tech giant ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.
The episode reflected the sustained overseas scrutiny of Chinese tech, with South Korea joining Italy, the US, Australia, and Taiwan in banning or limiting access to DeepSeek due to national security concerns.
In China, several local governments are integrating DeepSeek into their systems, and tech conglomerate Tencent announced plans to bring the chatbot to its WeChat app.
The move is set to shake up the Chinese chatbot market, with Tencent’s shares surging on the news amid a broader tech rally; its CEO briefly became China’s richest person.