DeepSeek, launched on Jan. 20, is controlled by Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence in China.
O'Neil urged Australians at home to guard their personal information and be careful about what else they share.
DeepSeek’s privacy policy states that the app collects data such as date of birth, email address, text and audio input, files, and keystrokes and stores it in China.
O'Neil said national security agencies in Australia were investigating the app and would provide formal advice in the future.
“So what our national security agencies will be doing at the moment is having a look at the settings of the app and understanding more about how it works before it issues some formal guidance to Australians about care that they need to take,” she said.
“New technologies do get invented from time to time and the advice is always the same, you should always exercise caution. National security advice that’s more formal will be forthcoming.”
O‘Neil also advised that she would not download DeepSeek personally, explaining, “I’m a ChatGPT girl at this stage. And I’ll wait to see that formal advice from national security agencies.
Speaking about AI more broadly, the minister also said that AI is “a bit scary,” something she felt particularly strongly about when discussing the technology with constituents.
However, she also noted AI would be a tool that helps Australians do many of their everyday tasks, including asking what recipes you can cook your kids for dinner.
The DeepSeek app topped Apple charts in the United States and Australia upon launch and was founded as a Chinese AI startup in 2023 by entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng.
The app reportedly cost just $5.6 million to train and could be cheaper for businesses to link up with compared to Open AI’s Chat GPT.
Meanwhile, Shadow Minister for Finance Jane Hume also urged caution on the DeepSeek app while speaking on Sunrise on Jan. 29.
She claimed DeepSeek was the highest-downloaded app in Australia, overtaking ChatGPT.
“Take our advice from the security experts and we hope that the government will make that advice explicit because we want to make sure that we keep Australians safe,” she said.
“There’s plenty of opportunities ... in AI, both professionally and personally, but we would urge caution on this one.”
The launch of DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the tech-heavy United States stock market on Jan. 27, with AI giant Nvidia’s shares plunging 17 percent in a day.
U.S. President Donald Trump warned the U.S. tech industry about the need to stay competitive during a speech to Republican colleagues in Florida recently.
Collecting Personal Information from Google and Apple
The DeepSeek privacy policy reveals it collects automatic personal information, including keystroke patterns, IP addresses, 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 states.
“We store the information we collect in secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
‘Socialist’ Bias
The U.S. House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shared a range of sample chats from the app to X, showing a potential bias towards socialist values.In another sample chat, the app refuses to answer when asked to write a 500-word opinion piece praising the achievements of the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP.
“Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else,” the app says.
