Several bureaus of the U.S. Department of Commerce are said to have banned employees from using the DeepSeek chatbot on government devices. “To protect the Department of Commerce’s information systems, access to China’s new DeepSeek artificial intelligence is completely prohibited on all [government equipment],” one bureau said in an email, Reuters reports. “Do not download, view, or access any DeepSeek-related apps, desktop programs, or websites.”
The extent of the government’s ban on DeepSeek is not yet known. Several states, including New York, Texas, and Virginia, have banned DeepSeek on government devices. Some members of Congress and state attorneys general are pushing for legislation to ban the AI-generated app from federal devices amid concerns about the privacy and security of government data.
The emergence of DeepSeek in January as a low-cost, open-source AI model that could compete with companies like OpenAI and Google led to a significant drop in the shares of US tech companies. The DeepSeek app soared to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings at the time.
OpenAI accused Chinese startups of copying its artificial intelligence models and said it was studying DeepSeek in particular. This month, the company said DeepSeek was “state-subsidized” and “state-controlled” and called for a ban on its use in U.S. government, military, and intelligence devices.
