New York state bans DeepSeek from government devices

The sudden popularity of a China-based app has prompted worries from U.S. government officials about whether it is safe to use.

The state of New York has banned the Chinese artificial intelligence assistant DeepSeek on government devices.

Gov. Kathy Hochul issued the directive on Monday, citing “serious concerns” about DeepSeek’s apparent censorship and its potential for foreign government surveillance. The AI app, created by a small research lab owned by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, has faced both praise and suspicion since it abruptly surpassed some of the most well-known AI models last month.

“Public safety is my top priority and we’re working aggressively to protect New Yorkers from foreign and domestic threats,” Hochul said in a news release. “New York will continue fighting to combat cyber threats, ensure the privacy and safety of our data, and safeguard against state-sponsored censorship.”

DeepSeek’s AI app shot to No. 1 in the Apple App Store in January, pushing ChatGPT down to second place. It roused a stir in Silicon Valley and sent tech stocks plummeting as the tech industry faced something of a reckoning around the AI race between the U.S. and China.

DeepSeek made waves for building an AI model that outperformed some of the industry-leading models made by U.S. companies, at (if its claims are true) a fraction of the cost. But the sudden popularity of a mainland China-based app has prompted worries from U.S. government officials about whether it is safe to use.

Chinese law mandates companies to cooperate and assist with China’s intelligence efforts, potentially exposing data held by Chinese companies to government surveillance. That system differs from the U.S., where, in most cases, American agencies would need a court order or warrant to access information held by American tech companies.

In banning DeepSeek from New York state devices, Hochul’s office noted suspicions that the app “can be used to harvest user data and steal technology secrets.”

The order builds on the Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government Act (LOADinG Act) that Hochul signed in December, which implemented sweeping guidelines for the use of AI by state agencies — including provisions for human oversight, transparency and risk assessment.

Just last week, Congress also introduced a bipartisan bill to ban DeepSeek on federal government devices, similarly citing a risk of espionage.

“The technology race with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not one the United States can afford to lose,” Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., who introduced the legislation alongside Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., said in a statement. “The national security threat that DeepSeek — a CCP-affiliated company — poses to the United States is alarming.”

And Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced a different bill at the end of January that, if passed, would prohibit Americans from downloading Chinese AI models like DeepSeek altogether, stating that “every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has pushed back against the more prevalent concerns around national security — the same concerns that plagued TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, and caused the U.S. to pass a still-nebulous ban of the popular social media app.

“The Chinese government attaches great importance to and legally protects data privacy and security,” ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Thursday at a regular briefing in Beijing. “It has never and will never require companies or individuals to collect or store data in violation of the law.”