ATHENS 

The Netherlands has banned civil servants from using DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, according to local media reports.

The ban was imposed by State Secretary for Kingdom Relations and Digitalization Zsolt Szabo on the grounds of possible espionage, public broadcaster NOS reported Wednesday evening.

Amid allegations that DeepSeek stores personal information to share with Chinese state authorities, the Dutch Data Protection Authority last Friday also urged caution around its use.

“People would be wise to ask themselves whether they really want to enter personal and other sensitive data into this app," it said.

Earlier this week, South Korea and Australia also barred officials in certain departments from using DeepSeek.

DeepSeek’s latest model was released in late January to the public, causing the price of US tech stocks to sink.

The company claims that its chatbot, which rivals leading platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, was trained for a fraction of the cost of previous models and used less advanced semiconductor chips.

DeepSeek also says its product uses less memory and energy than its rivals, making it cheaper to operate.

Shortly after the Chinese chatbot was released, it became the most downloaded free app on Apple's App Store – a rare occurrence for a Chinese app