New York State has banned Chinese-tied artificial intelligence application DeepSeek from government devices over data privacy concerns and censorship, according to The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
A bipartisan duo in the U.S. House have proposed legislation to ban DeepSeek from federal devices, similar to the policy already in place for the popular social media platform TikTok.
The news comes as artificial intelligence is in focus at a Paris, France summit where world leaders, executives, and experts will hammer out pledges on guiding the development of the rapidly advancing technology.
Vice President JD Vance — making his first trip abroad since taking office — is attending the Paris AI Action Summit starting, while China's President Xi Jinping will be sending his special envoy, signaling high stakes for the meeting.
Heads of state and top government officials, tech bosses and researchers are gathering in Paris for the two-day summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The event aims to address how to harness artificial intelligence's potential so that it benefits everyone, while containing the technology's myriad risks.
Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Darin LaHood, R-Ill., on Thursday introduced the "No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act," which would ban federal employees from using the Chinese AI app on government-owned electronics. They cited the Chinese government's ability to use the app for surveillance and misinformation as reasons to keep it away from federal networks.
"The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans," Gottheimer said in a statement. "We simply can't risk the CCP infiltrating the devices of our government officials and jeopardizing our national security."
The proposal comes after the Chinese software company in December published an AI model that performed at a competitive level with models developed by American firms like OpenAI, Meta, Alphabet, and others.
DeepSeek purported to develop the model at a fraction of the cost of its American counterparts. A January research paper about DeepSeek's capabilities raised alarm bells and prompted debates among policymakers and leading Silicon Valley financiers and technologists.
The Associated Press previously reported DeepSeek has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, according to the security research firm Feroot.
Gottheimer cited security concerns as the main reason for introducing the bill.
"It was enough of an alarm that I thought we should immediately ban it on all government devices and make it clear to the public of the risks. I think that's a critical first step," Gottheimer told AP. "Americans should know the impact on their personal privacy and data, especially because we know that Americans are sharing proprietary information on AI chatbots, highly sensitive information, documents, contracts, and the like."
South Korea's spy agency has accused Chinese AI app DeepSeek of "excessively" collecting personal data and using all input data to train itself, and questioned the app's responses to questions relating to issues of national pride.
The National Intelligence Service said it sent an official notice to government agencies last week urging them to take security precautions over the artificial intelligence app.
"Unlike other generative AI services, it has been confirmed that chat records are transferable as it includes a function to collect keyboard input patterns that can identify individuals and communicate with Chinese companies' servers such as volceapplog.com," the NIS said in a statement issued on Sunday.
Information from The Associated Press and Reuters was used to compile this report.