South Korea accused a Chinese chatbot of leaking user data.

The South Korean data protection regulator reported that the Chinese chatbot DeepSeek transmitted user data from South Korea to ByteDance, the owner of the TikTok service. This was reported by the Yonhap news agency.

In order to protect personal data, South Korea has temporarily banned the download of DeepSeek due to concerns about data collection practices. However, before the ban was introduced, the app was downloaded more than a million times from Apple and Google stores.

Currently, there is no information on what specific user data may have been transferred and to what extent.

South Korea is seeking explanations from the Chinese side. DeepSeek has already appointed a representative for negotiations and acknowledged shortcomings in addressing local data protection laws.

Recently, the Chinese startup DeepSeek released its own artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek-R1, which became a leader in downloads in the American App Store.

Due to security concerns, several countries have banned the use of DeepSeek on devices of government officials. Additionally, Italy decided to block it at the end of January.

Earlier, the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council warned that the AI-based chatbot DeepSeek is a 'great tool' for collecting intelligence data.