Australian minister urges caution over China's DeepSeek, raises privacy concerns

ISLAMABAD

Australian Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic on Tuesday raised privacy concerns over China’s AI chatbot DeepSeek, urging users to think carefully before downloading it.

"I think people will naturally gravitate towards that. I think there’ll be parallels to what you’ve seen with discussion around TikTok that emerge around DeepSeek as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if that emerges," he said.

Earlier speaking to ABC, the Australian minister said that China has been determined since the last decade to be a world leader in artificial intelligence and he urged caution while downloading the Chinese app.

“I would be very careful about that,” he said.


On Monday, US President Donald Trump said that the sudden rise of the Chinese AI app DeepSeek should be "a wakeup call" for America’s tech companies.

Offering a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DeepSeek has raised alarms among Western tech giants.

Backed by the Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek launched its DeepSeek-R1 large language model (LLM) on Jan. 20.

Unlike ChatGPT’s subscription-based and closed-source platform, priced at $200 per month, DeepSeek-R1 is entirely open-source and free, allowing users to access and operate it on native hardware without limitations.