Cybersecurity Policy Report, Italy Imposes Data Restrictions on DeepSeek Chatbot, (Jan 31, 2025)

By Tony Foley

After requesting information from Hanzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence earlier this week on its harvesting of data to train the companies’ generative artificial intelligence technology, Garante, the Italian data protection authority, yesterday ordered the companies to limit their processing.

Garante had asked the DeepSeek companies for information on the kinds of information used to train its GenAI chatbot, and, in case the data was collected via web-scraping activities, how the chatbot’s users were being informed about the processing of their data (CPR, Jan. 29).

In its news release announcing the restrictions, Garante said its decision to limit DeepSeek’s processing was prompted by the receipt of a communication from the companies, the content of which Garante found to be “completely insufficient.” Specifically, DeepSeek’s reply maintained that its companies did not operate in Italy and that European legislation did not apply to them, according to Garante.

In addition to its order limiting processing, Garante said it had opened an investigation into DeepSeek and its processing activities.

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