DeepSeek ‘shared person knowledge’ with TikTok proprietor ByteDance | EUROtoday

South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing person knowledge with the proprietor of TikTok in China.

“We confirmed DeepSeek communicating with ByteDance,” the South Korean knowledge safety regulator informed Yonhap News Agency.

The nation had already eliminated DeepSeek from app shops over the weekend over knowledge safety considerations.

The Chinese app prompted shockwaves within the AI world in January, wiping billions off international inventory markets over claims its new mannequin was educated at a a lot decrease price than US rivals comparable to ChatGPT.

Since then, a number of nations have warned that person knowledge is probably not correctly protected, and in February a US cybersecurity firm alleged potential knowledge sharing between DeepSeek and ByteDance.

DeepSeek’s obvious in a single day influence noticed it shoot to the highest of App Store charts within the UK, US and plenty of different nations world wide – though it now sits far beneath ChatGPT in UK rankings.

In South Korea, it had been downloaded over 1,000,000 occasions earlier than being pulled from Apple and Google’s App Stores on Saturday night.

Existing customers can nonetheless entry the app and apply it to an internet browser.

The knowledge regulator, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), informed South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency that regardless of discovering a hyperlink between DeepSeek and ByteDance, it was “yet to confirm what data was transferred and to what extent”.

Critics of the Chinese state have lengthy argued its National Intelligence Law permits the federal government to entry any knowledge it desires from Chinese firms.

However, ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, is owned by various international traders – and others say the identical legislation permits for the safety of personal firms and private knowledge.

Fears over person knowledge being despatched to China was one of many causes the US Supreme Court upheld a ban on TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance.

The US ban is on maintain till 5 April as President Donald Trump makes an attempt to dealer a decision.

Cybersecurity firm Security Scorecard printed a weblog on DeepSeek on 10 February which urged “multiple direct references to ByteDance-owned” providers.

“These references suggest deep integration with ByteDance’s analytics and performance monitoring infrastructure,” it mentioned in its assessment of DeepSeek’s Android app.

Security Scorecard expressed concern that together with privateness dangers, DeepSeek “user behaviour and device metadata [are] likely sent to ByteDance servers”.

It additionally discovered knowledge “being transmitted to domains linked to Chinese state-owned entities”.

On Monday, South Korea’s PIPC mentioned it “found out traffic generated by third-party data transfers and insufficient transparency in DeepSeek’s privacy policy”.

It mentioned DeepSeek was cooperating with the regulator, and acknowledged it had did not to consider South Korean privateness legal guidelines.

But the regulator suggested customers “exercise caution and avoid entering personal information into the chatbot”.

South Korea has already adopted various nations comparable to Australia and Taiwan in banning DeepSeek from authorities units.

The BBC has contacted the PIPC, ByteDance and DeepSeek’s mum or dad firm, High Flyer, for a response.