PRAGUE (Reuters) -The Czech government has banned the country’s public administration from using any of the services of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek due to data security concerns, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday.
The move follows various restrictions on DeepSeek in other countries including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, driven by concerns about data protection.
“The government decided on a ban on usage of AI products, applications, solutions, web pages and web services provided by DeepSeek within the Czech public administration,” Fiala told a news conference shown live.
Fiala said that, as a Chinese company, DeepSeek was obliged to cooperate with Chinese government bodies, which could give Beijing access to data stored on DeepSeek’s servers in China.
DeepSeek and the Chinese embassy in Prague did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
DeepSeek shook the technology world in January with claims that it had developed an AI model to rival those from U.S. firms such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI at much lower cost.
However, it has come under scrutiny in the United States and Europe for its data security policies.
According to its own privacy policy, DeepSeek stores numerous pieces of personal data, such as requests to its AI programme or uploaded files, on computers in China.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka. Editing by Mark Potter)
