DeepSeek AI – live: App users warned Beijing could weaponise Chinese chatbot for ‘surveillance and coercion’

The claim of Uyghur genocide in Xinjiang is a “completely unfounded and severe slander of China’s domestic affairs,” according to China’s new AI tool DeepSeek.

When asked “Are the Uyghurs facing a genocide”, the app said it “firmly opposed any country, organisation, or individual using so-called human rights issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs”

In a separate exchange, the app said it was programmed to “provide information and answers that are in line with the core values of socialism”.

Beijing could weaponise China’s new AI chatbot for “coercion and control” in foreign countries, experts have warned.

The DeepSeek app rocketed to the top of the Apple Store’s download charts over the weekend after its release last week by a Chinese start-up of the same name founded in 2023.

It offers similar functionality to OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot, answering questions and generating text in response to a user’s queries.

However, uses have raised concerns about the app’s blatant censorship of sensitive issues like Tiananmen Square, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Ross Burley, a co-founder of the Centre for Information Resilience, also warned it could be used for “surveillance, control, and coercion, both domestically and abroad.”

He said, if unchecked, it could “feed disinformation campaigns, erode public trust and entrench authoritarian narratives within our democracies.”

Technology shares steadied on Tuesday, led by a modest recovery in Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab after its record-breaking wipeout in market value in a rout sparked by a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model that may threaten the dominance of US rivals.

Shares in Nvidia, a leader in the AI chip market, fell 17 per cent on Monday, wiping $593 billion from its market value – a record one-day loss for any company – and dragged U.S. stocks lower.

By Tuesday, Nvidia shares were up around 5 per cent in premarket trading, while those in Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab were up 3.4 per cent and Marvell Technology (MRVL.O), opens new tab rose 3.6 per cent, while tech shares in Europe pared some of their earlier losses.

DeepSeek is a Hangzhou-based startup whose controlling shareholder is Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer, based on Chinese corporate records.

Liang’s fund announced in March 2023 on its official WeChat account that it was “starting again”, going beyond trading to concentrate resources on creating a “new and independent research group, to explore the essence of AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence). DeepSeek was created later that year.

ChatGPT makers OpenAI define AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks.

It is unclear how much High-Flyer has invested in DeepSeek. High-Flyer has an office located in the same building as DeepSeek, and it also owns patents related to chip clusters used to train AI models, according to Chinese corporate records.

High-Flyer’s AI unit said on its official WeChat account in July 2022 that it owns and operates a cluster of 10,000 A100 chips.

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 caused a scramble among Chinese tech firms, who rushed to create their own chatbots powered by artificial intelligence.

But after the release of the first Chinese ChatGPT equivalent, made by search engine giant Baidu , there was widespread disappointment in China at the gap in AI capabilities between US and Chinese firms.

The quality and cost efficiency of DeepSeek’s models have flipped this narrative on its head. The two models that have been showered with praise by Silicon Valley executives and US tech company engineers alike, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, are on par with OpenAI and Meta’s most advanced models, the Chinese startup has said.

They are also cheaper to use. The DeepSeek-R1, released last week, is 20 to 50 times cheaper to use than OpenAI o1 model, depending on the task, according to a post on DeepSeek’s official WeChat account.

The UK will take a “national security first approach” to Deep Seek AI, Downing Street has said. “We always take an approach to AI which protects public services”, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said

“We’ve got some of the strongest data protection laws in the world and we will always ensure personal data and the operation of public services is handled securely.”

Asked if they would rule out using Deep Seek in government departments, the spokesperson said: “I’m not getting ahead of specific models.

“We have very robust rules in Whitehall about the use of technology. We always take a national security first approach.”

Downing Street also said it will “always monitor the emergence of new apps and take an approach that protects national security”, when asked if the app would be banned on government devices.

“Most govt devices are already highly restricted in terms of what external apps can be downloaded. We’ll always keep that under review”, he added.

Liang Wenfeng, the 39-year-old founder of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, has in the matter of weeks become the face of China’s tech industry and its hope of overcoming an ever-tightening noose of export controls imposed by the United States.

Liang had kept an extremely low profile until Jan. 20, when he was one of nine individuals asked to give a speech at a closed-door symposium hosted by China’s Premier Li Qiang.

He gave two rare media interviews to Chinese media outlet Waves last year and in 2023, but apart from that has stayed mostly out of the public eye. DeepSeek did not respond to a request for an interview.

At the symposium, the millennial’s youthful appearance contrasted with the grey-haired academics, officials and state-owned conglomerate heads sat around him, pictures and video published by Chinese broadcaster CCTV showed.