Australia bans DeepSeek on government devices over security concerns

The Australian government has officially banned the use of DeepSeek on all federal government equipment under orders from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The decision comes amid growing concerns about the security risks posed by the large language model.

Accordingly, Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke signed a directive banning the use of DeepSeek on all government systems and devices. Explaining this decision, Mr. Tony Burke cited reports from cybersecurity intelligence agencies that chatbots pose "unacceptable security risks". Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke emphasized that this decision was not based on the country of origin of the application but on a thorough assessment of potential risks. The country's authorities are said to have closely followed the deployment of AI chatbots from China, with some warnings related to censorship and data security.

'The government is acting quickly and decisively to protect our national security and national interests,' Mr Burke said. 'AI is a technology with great promise and potential – but national security is always Australia's top priority.

The restrictions on DeepSeek's use in the Australian public service come weeks after the Albanese government announced it was banning Chinese social media app TikTok from all government devices over "security and privacy" concerns.

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Australia is not the only country concerned about DeepSeek's privacy concerns. Several other countries, including Taiwan and Italy, are also planning to ban or restrict access to DeepSeek. The United States is currently investigating whether DeepSeek trained its AI models by stealing proprietary data from companies in the country. The Irish Data Protection Commission has also asked DeepSeek for details about how it handles data.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 06 February 2025