The DeepSeek controversy has prompted authorities to inquire about the source of the data and its level of security.
There are concerns and questions about the origin and destination of the training data as well as the security of the data raised by the sudden rise of DeepSeek.
The sudden emergence of DeepSeek has sparked concerns and inquiries, particularly regarding the origin and destination of the instructional data, as well as its protection.
DeepSeek is a new player on the artificial intelligence field for those returning from a short holiday away from the news. Just a week after its launch, the Chinese startup topped the charts as the most downloaded free app in the US. This caused a stock market upset that cost nVidia and Oracle shareholders a lot of money.
The model's outputs and certain aspects are publicly accessible, which is why DeepSeek has been called an open-source project. This makes it qualify as an open-weight model. The main difference is that we don't know all the information needed to make the models work perfectly.
And it is the data that poses a concern to many that pose a concern. OpenAI says DeepSeek used its ChatGPT model to train their AI chatbot, which caused a lot of jokes. If only because OpenAI has previously been accused of utilizing data that is not its own for the purpose of training ChatGPT.
Authorities are starting to ask questions as well. DeepSeek has been asked by the Italian privacy regulator to provide information about the data it processes in the chatbot. The GDPD is concerned about the privacy of millions of Italians and has demanded that DeepSeek respond to 20-day questions about privacy.:
- Which personal data is collected
- The origin of the data
- Purpose for the collection
- Whether the data is stored on servers in China
The Italian media outlet ANSA reported that DeepSeek vanished from the app stores of Google and Apple in Italy on January 29, 2025.
Furthermore, researchers at Wiz have found a publicly accessible database belonging to DeepSeek.
“This database contained a significant volume of chat history, backend data and sensitive information, including log streams, API Secrets, and operational details. “
Not only was the database accessible and readable, it was also susceptible to management and privilege escalation within the DeepSeek environment. Anyone could run queries to get sensitive logs and plaintext chat messages, and even steal plaintext passwords and local files.
It's obvious that this oversight put DeepSeek and its users in danger.
The need for fast developments in this field is creating privacy risks that we have never seen before, simply because security is an afterthought for the developers. We have said this before and we will probably have to repeat it numerous times, but the need for fast developments in this field is creating privacy risks that we have never It could end up in unexpected and undesirable places.
