11:36 - 31.01.2025

---

January 31, Fineko/abc.az. The Italian Data Protection Authority has ordered the blocking of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) program DeepSeek.

ABC.AZ informs that according to regulator's statement, the reason was the "unsatisfactory responses" of the Chinese company, which indicated that it did not operate in Italy and did not comply with EU regulations.

Earlier, the data protection guarantor contacted the Chinese developers of the application for clarification on what personal data is collected, for what purposes, where it is stored and how its confidentiality is guaranteed. In parallel, the Auhtority conducts an appropriate check.

The day before, the app became unavailable to residents of Italy in Apple and Google online stores without specifying the reasons.

Chinese company DeepSeek released a new version of the R1 chatbot on January 20, which is claimed to be superior to the advanced ChatGPT version of the American company OpenAI. At the same time, the developers of the Chinese chatbot, as experts point out, spent much less money than OpenAI. The markets reacted violently to the new product: the Nasdaq technology index fell by more than 3%, and shares of Nvidia, a supplier of expensive chips for OpenAI, fell by 16.86%.