Should millions of Americans be downloading Chinese AI app DeepSeek and giving their personal data to it? For reasons of privacy and cybersecurity, maybe not.

The drama started around January 20 when Chinese AI startup DeepSeek announced R1, a new simulated reasoning (SR) model that it claimed could match OpenAI's o1 in reasoning benchmarks. Like o1, R1 is trained to work through a simulated chain of thought process before providing an answer,

DeepSeek, an AI from a Chinese startup, outperforms ChatGPT on Apple’s App Store. DeepSeek is an AI-powered chatbot similar to ChatGPT, but powered by the DeepSeek-V3 model. US

DeepSeek is a new artificial intelligence chatbot that’s sending shock waves through Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Washington. The app, named after the Chinese start-up that built it, rocketed to the top of Apple’s App Store in the United States over the weekend.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has launched large language models that rival those of Meta and OpenAI at a lower cost. Its mobile app has gained 1.6 million downloads, topping App Store charts in multiple countries and raising concerns for US AI companies about market dynamics and pricing strategies.

Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, said on Thursday it had ordered DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country after the Chinese artificial intelligence startup failed to address the regulator's concerns over its privacy policy.