Australia’s science minister, Ed Husic, has become the first member of a Western government to raise privacy concerns about DeepSeek, the Chinese chatbot causing turmoil on the markets and in the tech industry.
Chinese tech, from Huawei to TikTok, has repeatedly been the subject of allegations the firms are linked to the Chinese state, and fears this could lead to people’s data being harvested for intelligence purposes.
Donald Trump has said DeepSeek is a “wake up call” for the US but did not seem to suggest it was a threat to national security – instead saying it could even be a good thing if it brought costs down.
But Husic told ABC News on Tuesday there remained a lot of unanswered questions, including over “data and privacy management.”
“I would be very careful about that, these type of issues need to be weighed up carefully,” he added.
DeepSeek has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment – but users in the UK and US have so far shown no such caution.
DeepSeek has rocketed to the top of the app stores in both countries, with market analysts Sensor Tower saying it has seen 3 million downloads since launch.
As much as 80% of these have come in the past week – meaning it has been downloaded at three times the rate of rivals such as Perplexity.
According to DeepSeek’s own privacy policy, it collects large amounts of personal information collected from users, which is then stored “in secure servers” in China.
This may include:
* Your email address, phone number and date of birth, entered when creating an account
* Any user input including text and audio, as well as chat histories
* So-called “technical information” – ranging from your phone’s model and operating system to your IP address and “keystroke patterns”.
It says it uses this information to improve DeepSeek by enhancing its “safety, security and stability”.
It will then share this information with others, such as service providers, advertising partners, and its corporate group, which will be kept “for as long as necessary”.
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