DeepSeek targeted by the Irish DPA for its data practices

Founded in May 2023 and developing a large language model that's allegedly much more efficient than its competitors from OpenAI or Meta, DeepSeek is now facing the European regulations. While the European Commission is not involved yet, the Chinese AI company needs to clarify the inner workings of its software solutions to the Irish authorities, who are concerned about how DeepSeek is handling the personal data of local users. 

According to a statement from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), quoted by Reuters,   

"The Data Protection Commission (DPC) has written to DeepSeek requesting information on the data processing conducted in relation to data subjects in Ireland." 

For the time being, there is no deadline for DeepSeek's reply and no public information concerning the sanctions that might target the company if they don't reply or if their answer proves that their AI solution is not processing personal data in a way that's compliant with European and Irish regulations. 

Based on the DeepSeek-R1 model, the company's first chatbot app arrived earlier this month. Available for free on iOS and Android, the app is already a threat to ChatGPT, as it quickly became the most downloaded free app on the App Store in the US. One of the short-term effects it had on the market was to push Nvidia shares down by a whopping 18%.

All data involved in DeepSeek-R1, including the generative AI algorithms, is open-source, so anyone can create custom solutions based on it for low costs. However, the way it handles personal data should also be as transparent as possible to allow easy access to the European market.