DeepSeek: A Growing List of Countries Restricting or Questioning the Chinese AI Firm

Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek has sparked both excitement and concern in the tech world, with its frontier reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1, facing bans just weeks after launch.

Studies have raised cybersecurity and safety concerns, highlighting the model’s vulnerability to generating harmful and biased content.

Additionally, as a Chinese company, DeepSeek is subject to laws that could grant Chinese intelligence agencies access to user data, fueling national security fears.

Last week, Taiwan prohibited government agencies from using DeepSeek’s AI model, citing risks to national information security.

While no nationwide ban has been imposed in the U.S., Texas became the first state to ban DeepSeek on government-issued devices, warning of potential threats to critical infrastructure through AI-driven data harvesting.

Italy was the first country to block DeepSeek entirely, taking action on January 30 after the company reportedly refused to comply with an information request from Italian authorities.

Meanwhile, data protection regulators in Belgium, Ireland, France, and South Korea have announced plans to question DeepSeek on its handling of user data.