The Dutch government has banned the use of the new Chinese chatbot DeepSeek for civil servants, according to the NOS broadcasting company. The decision was made by the Secretary of State for Digitalization, Jolt Saboo, who stated that DeepSeek is an app that could be used for espionage.
Last Friday, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) announced an investigation into the possible transfer of personal data to China. This came in response to concerns about the privacy policy of DeepSeek, which released the new chatbot.
DeepSeek, a Chinese company, introduced its version of artificial intelligence, R1, on January 20. According to the company’s website, this version is comparable to ChatGPT in capabilities. After the release of the new version, the chatbot became popular and topped the charts in several countries. In particular, the surge in interest in the Chinese app affected global stock markets, causing a more than 3% drop in the U.S. Nasdaq Composite index on January 27.
In the Apple App Store, DeepSeek topped the charts in countries such as the U.S., the U.K., the UAE, Japan, South Korea, and China.
