Privacy activists are warning about the invasive nature of DeepSeek, which collects a trove of personal user information that could be handed over to the Chinese government
People, however, just don’t care.
Luke de Pulford, co-founder of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), shared screenshots from the Chinese AI chatbot’s privacy policy, which stated data it collects is stored in “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
“Just fyi, @deepseek_ai collects your IP, keystroke patterns, device info, etc etc, and stores it in China, where all that data is vulnerable to arbitrary requisition from the [Chinese] State,” said de Pulford, leader of IPAC, a global group of lawmakers who seek to hold China accountable for democratic abuses.
But de Pulford is not the only one warning against it.
“Interested in trying out the DeepSeek AI? I read DeepSeek’s Privacy Policy so you don’t have to,” wrote a popular online attorney. “The DeepSeek privacy policy is: You don’t have any privacy. None. It can collect almost any and all information from you and share it with almost anyone. But don’t worry, all your info is stored safely somewhere in China—where privacy is paramount!”
“My recommendation to you: don’t input sensitive or private data into DeepSeek’s Chat (the one hosted on the server). It goes without saying, but…,” tweeted Lukasz Olejnik, an independent researcher and consultant with King’s College London Institute for AI.
These warnings, though, are being met with apathy. A vast majority of people, after years of the U.S. government and activists stoking fears over TikTok’s ties to China, only to relent on a ban, couldn’t be convinced to worry.
“so what, lol,” replied one.
“Sort of like Google, Meta, and X…,” another user respinded.
“Wanna check Openai?” said another.
“Oh no, not my keystroke patterns! Crap! Info about my device is proprietary stuff, and it definitely isn’t already Made in China!” said one user.
Anticipating the response, de Pulford published a pre-emptive follow-up tweet. Despite the imperfections of legal systems in the West, the difference, he said, is at least the rights there are enforceable.
“Anticipating tedious whataboutery: the difference between this and free-world social media apps is that you can enforce your data rights in rule of law countries. This is not the case in China,” said de Pulford.
DeepSeek, “a scrappy Chinese start-up” as the New York Times described it, sent a shockwave through Wall Street this week, challenging Silicon Valley’s narrative that top-tier AI needs to cost top dollar.
The app now ranks 19th in the top free apps on the Apple Store.
But while DeepSeek may be cost-efficient (so long as the claims made out of China are true), users have pointed out censorship issues that prevent the AI chatbot from accurately answering some factual questions that would put China in a bad light, including about the Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan’s status as a country, or the international dispute over parts of the South China Sea.
But given those concerns exist with numerous apps, some just thought the posturing about DeepSeek was hypocritical.
“The underrated genius of DeepSeek is how it has trained (or AI-trained) U.S. startup founders to perfect the surprised face about data privacy, even though their main income so far has come from selling data,” wrote one.
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