Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek has been banned from Australian federal government devices after it was found to pose "an unacceptable risk" to national security.

Confirmation of the ban, which comes after Information Age exclusively confirmed a New South Wales government department banned DeepSeek last week, means federal government bodies must immediately remove DeepSeek from their devices and internal systems.

The Large Language Model (LLM) has raised concerns in Western nations because the data it collects is stored in China, where companies must comply with data requests from the Chinese government.

The announcement also follows similar moves by Taiwan, Italy, the US state of Texas, and parts of the US military.

“After considering threat and risk analysis, I have determined that the use of DeepSeek products, applications and web services poses an unacceptable level of security risk to the Australian Government,” Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster wrote in a direction issued by the department late on Tuesday night.

“Entities must manage the risks arising from DeepSeek’s extensive collection of data and exposure of that data to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government that conflict with Australian law.”

The ban won't apply to corporate bodies such as NBN Co and Australia Post, and the government said some exemptions may be granted “where the use [of DeepSeek] is necessary for the carrying out of national security or regulatory functions, including compliance and law enforcement functions”.

Victoria and South Australia were among the states and territories also investigating DeepSeek for potential security threats.

Government says it ‘will not hesitate to act’

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said while AI was "a technology full of potential and opportunity”, the government “will not hesitate to act when our agencies identify a national security risk”.

"Our approach is country-agnostic and focused on the risk to the Australian government and our assets,” he said.

Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told ABC News the Coalition "welcomed the decision" to ban DeepSeek on federal devices.

The government's special envoy for cybersecurity and digital resilience, Andrew Charlton, told ABC News on Wednesday that the ban was “absolutely not a symbolic move”.

“We don't want to expose government systems to these applications,” he said.

“That's the main source of the risk and that's why this ban is important.”


DeepSeek is banned from federal government devices and systems, but can still be used on personal devices not on government networks. Photo: Shutterstock

Australians told to 'be careful'

Generative AI apps such as DeepSeek posed three main risks, Charlton said, including the possibility private information could be uploaded, the information provided by DeepSeek may not be accurate and contain political bias, and it could expose users to malware.

“We encourage people not to click links, and to be careful about where and when they download these applications,” he said.

DeepSeek has been one of the most popular free apps in Apple’s App Store for the past week, and remained at number one on Wednesday morning, ahead of OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.

Dr Dana Mckay, a senior lecturer at RMIT University’s School of Computing Technologies, said Chinese-made services such as DeepSeek were being banned because the Chinese government could request data from the company “not just when a crime has been committed, but also for economic or social reasons”.

“DeepSeek even collects keystroke patterns, which can be used to identify individuals, potentially allowing them to match in-work searches with leisure time searches, potentially leading to national security risks,” Mckay said.

The banning of DeepSeek from federal devices comes after the Australian government banned Chinese social media app TikTok from commonwealth systems in April 2023.

Like the TikTok ban, federal employees can still use DeepSeek on their personal devices which are not connected to government networks — and several Australian politicians have joined TikTok in the lead up to the 2025 federal election.