Report from EuroNews
In Brief – Italy’s data protection authority, the Garante, has ordered China-based chatbot phenom DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country after the company failed to address the regulator’s concerns over its privacy policy and data practices. The regulator is focused on the collection and use of data related to Italian users, including what personal data is collected by the chatbot app, for what purposes, on what legal basis, and whether it is stored in China. The Garante said in a statement that the response of the Chinese company to their inquiry was “completely insufficient” and included the claim that it should not be subject to local regulation in Italy or the jurisdiction of the Italian regulator and had no obligation to provide the agency with any information. Apple and Google have removed the DeepSeek apps from their app stores in Italy.
Context – When OpenAI’s Chat-GPT burst onto the stage in late 2022 it upended AI expectations and discourse, and AI-related public policy too. The Garante made a splash in early 2023 by banning the chatbot for failing to conform with the EU’s GDPR privacy law. The regulator questioned many aspects of OpenAI operations including how it collected data to train its models, the implications of hallucinations about individuals, the inability to keep children off the app, and how the company handled user personal information. OpenAI eventually reached an agreement with the regulator focused on how it collected and handled the data input into their systems by Italian users via signups and queries. While the EU has since enacted its AI Act to regulate all AI applications, including chatbot LLMs, European privacy regulators continue to engage in AI regulation as well via EU privacy law. This overlap has been criticized by some corporate AI developers for creating regulatory uncertainty in Europe. DeepSeek being based in China is also an issue with some governments. Researchers have identified that the app transfers user data directly to a Chinese state telecom operator, and government agencies, including in the US, Australia, and South Korea, are moving to prohibit the app on government employee devices.