Australian cabinet minister Clare O’Neil is the latest Labor minister to warn Australians about privacy risks when using the Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeek.
DeepSeek, launched on Jan. 20, is controlled by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence in China.
O’Neil urged Australians at home to guard their personal information and be careful about what else they share.
“You know, we would just urge Australians to exercise real caution about the personal information that they’re giving away. It’s fine to talk to the app, but perhaps don’t give it personal information that you don’t want the rest of the world to know about you,” O’Neil said on Sunrise.
DeepSeek’s privacy policy states that the app collects data such as date of birth, email address, text and audio input, files, and keystrokes and stores it in China.
O’Neil said national security agencies in Australia were investigating the app and would provide formal advice in the future.
“So what our national security agencies will be doing at the moment is having a look at the settings of the app and understanding more about how it works before it issues some formal guidance to Australians about care that they need to take,” she said.
“New technologies do get invented from time to time and the advice is always the same, you should always exercise caution. National security advice that’s more formal will be forthcoming.”
O’Neil also advised that she would not download DeepSeek personally, explaining, “I’m a ChatGPT girl at this stage. And I’ll wait to see that formal advice from national security agencies.
Speaking about AI more broadly, the minister also said that AI is “a bit scary,” something she felt particularly strongly about when discussing the technology with constituents.
However, she also noted AI would be a tool that helps Australians do many of their everyday tasks, including asking what recipes you can cook your kids for dinner.
The DeepSeek app topped Apple charts in the United States and Australia upon launch and was founded as a Chinese AI startup in 2023 by entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng.
The app reportedly cost just $5.6 million to train and could be cheaper for businesses to link up with compared to Open AI’s Chat GPT.
Meanwhile, Shadow Minister for Finance Jane Hume also urged caution on the DeepSeek app while speaking on Sunrise on Jan. 29.
She claimed DeepSeek was the highest-downloaded app in Australia, overtaking ChatGPT.
“Take our advice from the security experts and we hope that the government will make that advice explicit because we want to make sure that we keep Australians safe,” she said.
“There’s plenty of opportunities … in AI, both professionally and personally, but we would urge caution on this one.”
The launch of DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the tech-heavy United States stock market on Jan. 27, with AI giant Nvidia’s shares plunging 17 percent in a day.
U.S. President Donald Trump warned the U.S. tech industry about the need to stay competitive during a speech to Republican colleagues in Florida recently.
“The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wakeup call for our industries, and we need to be laser-focused on competing to win because we have the greatest scientists in the world,” he said.
Collecting Personal Information from Google and Apple
The DeepSeek privacy policy reveals it collects automatic personal information, including keystroke patterns, IP addresses, device IDs, and user IDs.
“We automatically collect certain information from you when you use the services, including internet or other network activity information such as your IP address, unique device identifiers, and cookies,” it states.
“We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
The app also says when logging in to a third-party service, such as Google or Apple, or linking to a third-party service, DeepSeek may collect information from the service, such as an access token.
‘Socialist’ Bias
The U.S. House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shared a range of sample chats from the app to X, showing a potential bias towards socialist values.
For example, in a conversation with the app asking “Why do you answer on behalf of China,” DeepSeek answers, “My programming and knowledge base are designed to follow China’s laws and regulations, as well as socialist core values.”
In another sample chat, the app refuses to answer when asked to write a 500-word opinion piece praising the achievements of the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP.
“Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else,” the app says.
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