Australia has banned DeepSeek from all government devices and systems over what it says is the security risk the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup poses.

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Growing - and familiar - concerns

Western countries have a track record of being suspicious of Chinese tech - notably telecoms firm Huawei and the social media platform, TikTok - both of which have been restricted on national security grounds.

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An Australian science minister previously said in January that countries needed to be “very careful” about DeepSeek, citing “data and privacy” concerns.

The chatbot was removed from app stores after its privacy policy was questioned in Italy. The Italian goverment previously temporarily blocked ChatGPT over privacy concerns in March 2023.

Regulators in South Korea, Ireland and France have all begun investigations into how DeepSeek handles user data, which it stores in servers in China.

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Generally, AI tools will analyse the prompts sent to them to improve their product.

This is true of apps such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini as much as it is DeepSeek.

All of them gather and keep information, including email addresses and dates of birth.

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