During a work with local authorities on privacy issues, North Korean officials reported on Monday that DeepSeek, a Taiwanese artificial intelligence company, has temporarily halted downloads of its robot apps in South Korea.
The company agreed to work with the company to strengthen privacy protections before relaunching the software, according to South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission, who announced DeepSeek’s programs were removed from the regional editions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Saturday night.
Users who have already installed DeekSeek for use on their phones or personal computers are not affected by the activity. DeepSeek users in South Korea should remove the app from their devices or evade entering personal information until the issues are resolved, according to Nam Seok, director of the North Korean commission’s investigation division.
In response to concerns that the AI type was storing too much sensitive information, many South Korean government organizations and companies have possibly blocked DeepSeek from their network or prohibited people from using the software for work.
The South Korean private committee, which began reviewing DeepSeek’s services last month, found that the company lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and possibly collected increased private information, Nam said.
Nam claimed that the committee had no information about how many people use DeepSeek in South Korea. According to a new study conducted by Wiseapp Retail, DeepSeek was used by approximately 1.2 million device people in South Korea during the third week of January, making it the second-most-popular AI type after ChatGPT.