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Australia bans DeepSeek on government devices citing 'unacceptable security risk'

DeepSeek app on iPhone

The Australian government bans the use of DeepSeek on all federal government devices by order of the Albanese government. This decision comes amid growing concerns about the security risk in the large language model.

The secretary of the Home Affairs Department has signed a directive banning the use of DeepSeek across government systems and devices, acting on advice from intelligence agencies that the chatbot presents an "unacceptable security risk." Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke emphasized that the decision was not based on the country of origin of the app but on the thorough assessment of its risks.

"The Albanese government is taking swift and decisive action to protect Australia’s national security and national interest," Burke said. "AI is a technology of promise and potential-but this government will never be afraid to take action where there is an identified national security risk."

The ban comes weeks after the Albanese administration announced a ban on the Chinese social media app TikTok from all government devices over "security and privacy" issues. It also comes after the industry closely followed the rollout of the AI chatbot, with several red flags being raised regarding censorship and data security.

The action of the Australian government comes in line with that of other governments, such as Taiwan and Italy, which are trying to deny access or limit access to DeepSeek.

The science minister, Ed Husic, had previously foreseen DeepSeek debate, similar to the arguments about TikTok. "I think people will naturally gravitate towards that. I think there'll be parallels to what you've seen with discussion around TikTok that emerge around DeepSeek as well. I wouldn't be surprised if that emerges," Husic said in January.

Australia is not the only country concerned with DeepSeek's privacy issues. The US is also currently investigating whether DeepSeek trained its AI models by stealing American companies' proprietary data. On the other hand, the Irish Data Protection Commission has also queried DeepSeek for details on how it is processing the data.

Source: The Guardian

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