The United States remains apprehensive about DeepSeek as Congressional offices have started to issue warnings to their employees against utilising it. DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot making whirlwinds in the AI market in the US, is reportedly being restricted on all House-issued devices. According to a notice received by Axios, the Chief Administrative Officer revealed that DeepSeek remains under review and unauthorised for official House use. According to a report, the US Department of Defense also decided to block access to DeepSeek.
Italy blocks access to DeepSeek
Earlier on Thursday, the data protection authority in Italy blocked access to DeepSeek. The step is aimed at protecting users' data and announced an investigation into the companies behind the chatbot.
The authority, which is also referred to as Garante, expressed dissatisfaction with DeepSeek's response to its initial query about what personal data is collected, where it is stored, and how users are notified.
The Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepSeek was founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng. It has sent shockwaves through the tech community. It has released efficient AI models that can compete with cutting-edge products from US companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
DeepSeek raises concern for US
Despite restrictions on its access to the most advanced chips, the emergence of DeepSeek has raised concerns that China may have overtaken the US in the artificial intelligence race.
Reports suggest that China is investing billions into artificial intelligence. It has also made huge investments in the semiconductor industry to bolster its capacity to make advanced computer chips, working to overcome limits on its access to those of industry leaders.
The Chinese AI chatbot began attracting more attention in the AI industry last month when it released a new AI model that it boasted was on par with similar models from US companies such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI and was more cost-effective in its use of expensive Nvidia chips to train the system on huge troves of data.
Also Read | What is DeepSeek and how this AI chatbot challenging ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta and more?