South Korea has accused Chinese AI startup DeepSeek of sharing user data with the owner of TikTok in China. "We confirmed DeepSeek communicating with ByteDance," the South Korean data protection regulator told Yonhap News Agency. The country had already removed DeepSeek from app stores over the weekend over data protection concerns.

A South Korean data protection regulator says that China’s DeepSeek genAI chatbot is sending data to TikTok owner ByteDance. The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) announced it would temporarily suspend new downloads of the DeepSeek model in South Korea after the discovery.

China’s artificial intelligence (AI) model DeepSeek has come under regulatory scrutiny in South Korea after it was found to have transmitted user data to ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) confirmed on Feb.