China has hit back at the Australian government’s banning of DeepSeek on all public sector devices, labelling it “ideological discrimination”.
The federal government announced earlier this week that Chinese generative AI tool DeepSeek would be banned from all government devices immediately after it was found to pose an “unacceptable risk” to national security.
Some states governments moved to block the AI from devices prior to the federal ban, and others including Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, quickly followed suit.
South Korea and Italy have also moved to prevent public servants from using DeepSeek.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the ban earlier this week, saying the government was taking “swift and decisive action” to protect national security.
“AI is a technology full of potential and opportunity – but the government will not hesitate to act when our agencies identify a national security risk,” Burke said.
“Our approach is country-agnostic and focused on the risk to the Australian government and our assets.”
China not happy
The Chinese government has slammed the banning of DeepSeek in the Australian public sector, with its Foreign Ministry saying this is a “political” move.
“[It is the] politicisation of economic, trade and technological issues,” the China Foreign Ministry statement said.
The key reason for the ban is that the data collected by DeepSeek is stored in China, where laws require companies to comply with data requests from the government.
“The Chinese government…has never and will never require enterprises or individuals to illegally collect or store data,” the China Foreign Ministry said in response.
Beijing-controlled media outlet The Global Times also published an article critical of Australia’s DeepSeek ban.
“Australia’s move is clearly driven by ideological discrimination, not technological concerns,” Liu Wei, the director of the Human-Machine Interaction and Cognitive Engineering Laboratory at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the publication.
“When US federal agencies take steps to contain Chineset technology, Australia seems compelled to follow suit.
“If Australia were genuinely citing technological risks to national security, it should also have blocked US-based OpenAI and other tech companies that have integrated with DeepSeek.
“Yet, there is no indication that the Australian government will take similar action against US-based firms.”
The states follow suit
State and territory governments are now also investigating the risks associated with DeepSeek, with some jurisdictions already adopting the same ban as their federal counterparts.
This comes after Information Age first revealed last week that the NSW Department of Customer Service had become the first public entity to block DeepSeek over privacy concerns.
A number of other nations have also taken steps to address the privacy risks posed by DeepSeek.
South Korea this week announced that all public sector employees would be temporarily banned from using DeepSeek on their devices, with all ministries and agencies ordered to exercise caution in using any generative AI services.
The Italian government has gone a step further and has ordered that DeepSeek be removed from app stores in the country entirely after questioning the company over its privacy policies.
The release of the DeepSeek generative AI chatbot last month sent shockwaves around Western nations and tech giants, as it was claimed to be created at a much lower cost and with less computing power than its larger rivals, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
