Microsoft bans Chinese AI DeepSeek

NEWS CENTER

Creation Date: May 09, 2025 13:08

Speaking at the US Senate, Microsoft Vice President and President Brad Smith cited data security risks and Chinese propaganda concerns as the reasons for this ban.

“We at Microsoft do not allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, according to Techcrunch. The app, which is available on both desktop and mobile, is also not available on Microsoft’s app store. Smith said the decision was motivated by data retention regulations in China and concerns that the app’s content could be used as government propaganda.

DATA IN CHINA, CONTENT IS CENSORIZED

DeepSeek’s privacy policy clearly states that user data is stored on servers in China. Chinese law requires that this data be shared with the government when necessary. DeepSeek is also known for its strict censorship of topics deemed sensitive to the Chinese government.

Interestingly, despite all this criticism, Microsoft made DeepSeek’s open source AI model, called R1, available on its own cloud service Azure. However, this is different from offering the application itself. Since the model is open source, anyone can download it and run it on their own servers, and in this case, the data does not go to China. However, this method does not eliminate other risks, such as the model producing propaganda or insecure software.

Smith said that before integrating the DeepSeek model into Azure, they analyzed its content and intervened to eliminate “harmful side effects,” but did not provide any technical details of this intervention.

While Microsoft has its own AI chatbot like Copilot in the market to compete with DeepSeek, it has not completely ruled out other chatbots. For example, Perplexity is available in the Windows Store, but Google’s chatbot Gemini or Chrome browser apps are not available in search results.

This move by Microsoft is being interpreted as part of the growing security concerns in the US against Chinese- origin artificial intelligence products.