Italy’s data protection authority on Thursday blocked access to the Chinese AI application DeepSeek to protect users' data and announced an investigation into the companies behind the chatbot. The authority,

The Chinese artificial intelligence app DeepSeek could not be accessed on Wednesday in Apple and Google app stores in Italy, the day after the country's data protection authority requested information on its use of personal data.

The country’s data watchdog says the firm gave it ‘completely insufficient’ answers to questions about what it does with user information.