Tech Desk 
Feb 07, 2025
Deepseek logo and the Chinese flag are seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. — Reuters
Following in the footsteps of several other countries, lawmakers in the United States have tabled a bill seeking to ban DeepSeek, the formidable Chinese rival to ChatGPT and countless US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, on government devices.
To name a few, Italy, South Korea, India, Taiwan and Australia are among the countries that have banned, completely or partially, the China-made AI assistant on the grounds of national security and user data security, Reuters reported.
DeepSeek ban in the US
The bill was presented forth by a New Jersey democrat Josh Gottheimer alongside Darin LaHood, an Illinois-based republican. Both of the members of the US House of Representatives claimed that the AI tool was an "alarming threat to US national security."
"The Chinese Communist Party has made it abundantly clear that it will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security, spew harmful disinformation, and collect data on Americans," Gottheimer said.
The representatives also warned of "direct ties" between DeepSeek and the Chinese government.
The development follows a report, published on Wednesday by a US cybersecurity firm Feroot Security, finding that DeepSeek contains a hidden code which can discreetly transmit user data to China Mobile, a state-owned telecoms firm in China.
The sequential clampdown on the Chinese AI models has raised concerns about its reliability, considering it took the world by storm within days of hitting the market and became the top-rated app on the Play Store and Apple App Store in many countries.
