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Several Australian ministers have warned against sharing personal information with the new, popular artificial intelligence (AI) model from China, DeepSeek.
DeepSeek’s AI assistant and large language model (LLM), R1, was launched earlier this month, quickly reaching the top spot for free applications on the Apple App Store in the US.
It is significant because, despite US-imposed restrictions on the export of powerful chipsets used for training AI to China, DeepSeek has successfully created a competitor to the world’s leading generative AI, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The impact of the new AI was so significant, it caused an almost A$1 trillion market cap drop for NVIDIA. It is also open source, unlike ChatGPT, allowing companies to create their own AI tools off of it.
However, as impressive and powerful as DeepSeek’s latest model sounds, Australian ministers have warned against its use, citing security concerns.
Speaking with Channel Seven’s Sunrise program, Housing Minister and former cyber security minister Clare O’Neil said that those using DeepSeek need to be careful when sharing personal information.
“It’s fine to talk to the app, but perhaps don’t give it personal information that you don’t want the rest of the world to know,” she said.
“What our national security agencies will be doing at the moment is having a look at the settings of the app and understanding more about how it works before it issues some formal guidance to Australians.”
DeepSeek has sparked major security concerns, particularly being a Chinese-made platform. Even US-made AI, such as those developed by OpenAI, have sparked privacy concerns regarding the use of personal data input into their chatbots to train AI models.
In the case of a Chinese-developed AI, alongside those concerns is the risk of personal and potentially nationally sensitive data being shared with China.
Victorian Senator and shadow minister for finance Jane Hume told Sunrise that the government should publicly declare its concerns over the use of DeepSeek AI.
“It’s overtaken ChatGPT, we would urge caution on this one. Take our advice from the security experts, and we hope that the government will make that advice explicit,” Hume said.
Already, users have observed the AI censoring answers to sensitive inquiries regarding the Chinese government and historical events.
When asked if Australians should be concerned about DeepSeek’s popularity, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that while AI can be beneficial, it cannot be unregulated.
“We are forward leaning about AI, we think it can be revolutionary in our economy, that it has the capacity to boost productivity and deliver a whole range of economic gains, but we know there needs to be guardrails as well,” said Chalmers, as reported by The Guardian.
“If you look at DeepSeek and what we have seen in the last couple of days, which has been some pretty extraordinary developments … we would urge Australians to be cautious about this new technology, we are constantly receiving advice, you would not expect me to go into the detail of that now here, what we are trying to do … is to work closely with the private sector, updating the advice when it is appropriate.”
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