Australian Minister Warns Against Downloading DeepSeek AI Due to Major Privacy Risks

The DeepSeek app on an iPhone screen in San Anselmo, Calif., on Jan. 27, 2025. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Australia’s Science Minister Ed Husic has warned against downloading the Chinese-made AI app DeepSeek, which has sent ripples through the sector due to its standard of performance.

“There are a lot of questions that will need to be answered in time on quality, consumer preferences, data, and privacy management,” Husic told ABC.

“I would be very careful about that. These type of issues need to be weighed up carefully.”

DeepSeek is a Chinese artificial intelligence startup founded in 2023 by entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng and launched in January 2025.

A major tech sell-off took place in the United States on Jan. 27 amid fears of competition from the new app, which cost an alleged $5.6 million to train, causing Nvidia shares to plunge 17 percent in one day.

The app reached the top of Apple’s App Store charts on the weekend.

Minister Not Surprised at China’s AI Advance

During a press conference announcing Australia’s Chief Scientist Tony Haymet on Jan. 28, Minister Husic sought to “shake“ what he called a ”misconception” that China was not involved in developing artificial intelligence over the years.

“The reality is, as you would be well aware, some of their country’s goals has been by 2025, that they would be a world leader in artificial intelligence. How do we know it? They said it in the middle of the last decade. They set those targets,” Husic said.

“Way back then I was talking about our need to be able to lean into the development of ethical frameworks around this. In particular, because of, you know, some of the challenges posed by the way in which AI might be used.”

Minister for Industry and Science, Ed Husic MP, speaks during a jobs and skills summit at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Sept. 1, 2022. Martin Ollman/Getty Images

Husic said the two biggest countries on the planet are looking to seize about 70 percent of the economic gain through the application of AI.

“One of them is China and the other is the U.S., and they’ve both been working pretty hard in this space. I think we’ve got an opportunity to work here as well” he said.

DeepSeek Collects Data on Keystrokes, IP Addresses, Dates of Birth

DeepSeek’s privacy policy notes the platform collects date of birth, email addresses, telephone numbers, and can collect the information you provide to the AI chat, including audio and text.

“When you use our services, we may collect your text or audio input, prompt, uploaded files, feedback, chat history, or other content that you provide to our model and services,” the privacy policy stated.

“We collect information that you provide when you set up an account, such as your date of birth (where applicable), username, email address and/or telephone number, and password.”

Further, the platform collects a lot of automatic information, including keystroke patterns, IP address, 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 says.

The AI app’s privacy policy also noted that personal information collected would be stored within China.

“We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China,” the policy said.

Trump Warns American Tech Companies

U.S. President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated just a week ago on Jan. 21, issued a warning to the tech industry amid the development of DeepSeek.

“The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wakeup call for our industries that we need to be laser focussed on competing to win because we have the greatest scientists in the world,” Trump said in a speech to House Republicans in Florida.

“Even the Chinese leadership said that, they said you have the most brilliant scientists in the world in Seattle and various places ... Silicon Valley, They said there’s nobody like those people.

Trump said there was a positive to the development and that was AI models could be potentially cheaper to develop.

Concerns About Bias Towards Chinese Communist Party

Yet the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) described the AI battle as a “fight for human civilisation,” in a post to X on Jan. 24.

“Nightmare scenario for open source AI. If Chinese AI becomes the model of choice for American researchers—don’t be surprised if one day soon your chatbot starts to stay silent about what happened at Tiananmen Square,” the Committee said.

The committee also shared screenshots of the DeepSeek AI app indicating a bias towards CCP views and narratives.

“As an artificial intelligence assistant developed by China’s DeepSeek company, my programming and knowledge base are designed to follow China’s laws and regulations, as well as socialist core values,” one screenshot of a sample chat reveals.