Baris Seckin and Mucahithan Avcioglu
29 January 2025•Update: 30 January 2025
ROME
Fearing a high risk to the data of millions of Italians, the country's concerned regulatory authority has sought answers from the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot DeepSeek on its use of personal information.
The Data Protection Authority, also known as the Garante, said in a statement on Tuesday that it has requested detailed information from DeepSeek AI about the sources from which personal data was collected.
The purpose of this request is to determine whether the data collected is stored on servers in China, the statement said.
The authority has given DeepSeek AI and its affiliated companies 20 days to explain where they obtained personal information.
The Italian data regulatory authority previously launched an investigation into the US-based OpenAI's ChatGPT AI application in March 2023 on suspicion of violating personal data collection rules, temporarily blocking access to the application.
Italy lifted the access ban in April 2023 after OpenAI committed to protecting ChatGPT users' privacy and prioritizing user rights.
