South Korea has banned new downloads of China’s DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, according to the country’s personal data protection watchdog.
The government agency said the AI model will become available again to South Korean users when “improvements and remedies” are made to ensure it complies with the country’s personal data protection laws.
In the week after it made global headlines, DeepSeek became hugely popular in South Korea leaping to the top of app stores with over a million weekly users.
But its rise in popularity also attracted scrutiny from countries around the world which have imposed restrictions on the app over privacy and national security concerns.
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