Italy’s privacy watchdog ordered the shutdown of DeepSeek across the country on Thursday, and launched an investigation into the companies behind the chatbot over privacy concerns.
The Chinese company’s AI assistant, which had outpaced ChatGPT in app store downloads this week, now faces scrutiny over its data practices. DeepSeek drew regulators’ attention after claiming European privacy laws don’t apply to its operations.
Italian users now see “not available in your region” messages when attempting to download the app from either Apple or Google platforms.
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Italy’s data protection authority, Garante, has given DeepSeek 20 days to explain how it collects and stores user data, and what protections it offers.
Prediction markets now give a 10% chance that the US will ban DeepSeek before April. In the short time that it’s been available, the Chinese-based company has been accused of “distilling” data from US-based OpenAI and also of having ByteDance components in its Android app.
It has also rattled Wall Street, triggering a massive sell-off in tech stocks that erased $1 trillion in market value.
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