Italy eliminates the Depseek chatbot from application stores

The Official Chinese application Depseek is no longer available in Italian stores in Android and Apple. He software It disappeared from both Google Play and the App Store, although it is still available in its web version. In addition, it continues to function regularly for those who had already downloaded it in recent days.

This decision comes after the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) questioned the Deepseek company on the legal basis for the processing of citizenship data and if these are stored on servers located in China. The DPA considers as a potential risk that the data of millions of people feed on China; Therefore, ask what personal data they were collected, with what intention and if the sources of consultation come from the web.

Italy had already taken letters in the matter in previous years. In March 2023, he briefly blocked chatgpt of application stores for activities related to data processing; And last December, I fined his OpenAi parent company with 15 million dollars for the same reason. The company lashed out with an appeal.

Depseek disappeared from the stores of apps

Visiting the Deepseek page in Play Store for Android or in App Store for iOS, Italian users found an unavailability message for the territory: “It is currently not available in the country or area where you are”, when only a few hours before the Downloads were still shooting. The DPA continues to investigate the process of Deepseek; The two creative companies of the ChatbotHangzhou Deepseek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing Deepseek Artificial Intelligence, have 20 days to respond to these consultations.

However, the web service is accessible from any browser installed both on PC and smartphonesand the operation is guaranteed even for those who had already installed the app In recent days. There have been no similar phenomena in any other country, including those of the European Union.

Deepseek manufacturers are not yet pronounced about it, nor the respective Apple and Google application stores.

Deepseek Lanza Janus-Pro, a generator of images that already competes with Dalle-3

Depseek does not take a false step: the Chinese technology company announces Janus-Pro 7B, a multimodal image generation model with a capacity superior to current market’s AI systems.

A serious problem with data storage

He boom From this application that has been downloaded more than 2.6 million times and has a 6 million user base world artificial intelligence.

This same week, Wired reviewed Depseek’s privacy policies that indicate that all data collected will be explicitly sent to its servers in the People’s Republic of China. This guideline describes the type of information that the model collects from its users, divided into three major categories: personal information shared with Depseek, information that automatically collects and data that can be obtained from other sources.

An internal source of the DPA declared Wired that he did not see a relationship between Depseek’s blockade in application stores and Chatgpt’s momentary veto: “We are not facing a second case like the one that affected the country in March 2023. There is no Of course, it disappeared from the stores of apps while the website is still available. “forecast distribution problems related to the obligations that managers such as Apple and Google must comply with based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Article originally published in Wired Italy. Adapted by Alondra Flores.