A surge of interest in DeepSeek, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the Chinese tech startup, has intensified debates about the economic and geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China in the AI arena. The chatbot’s quick rise to the top of the free app download charts on Apple’s iPhone store has prompted cautious advice from experts regarding user privacy and data security.
Experts, like David Nguyen, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Technological Leadership Institute, are closely scrutinizing DeepSeek. They are concerned that this Chinese startup could be competing with American companies, who are at the forefront of generative AI, but at a much lower cost. Nguyen warns users that their interactions with the AI assistant generate data, which is then used to enhance the technology. “What users might not understand is when they interact with an open or an AI model, that interaction creates data, and that data is used as training data,” Nguyen explained. “That data belongs to them. So every time you interact with this model, that’s more data it can feed back upon itself.”
DeepSeek’s privacy policy highlights the data collected including personal information used in profile creation, uploaded documents, and chat records. The policy also states data is stored “as long as necessary” for the app to function and stored on “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
Manjeet Rege, director of the University of St. Thomas’ Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence, suggests that expert oversight can help mitigate some user concerns, but the potential risks remain. Reflecting the rapid pace of innovation, DeepSeek announced on Monday that it had been the target of “large-scale malicious attacks.” The company stated that registered users could still utilize the service without interruption.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
