Italy’s data protection authority on Thursday blocked access to the Chinese AI application DeepSeek to protect users’ data and announced an investigation into the companies behind the chatbot.
The authority, called Garante, expressed dissatisfaction with DeepSeek’s response to its initial query about what personal data is collected, where it is stored and how users are notified.
“Contrary to the authority’s findings, the companies declared that they do not operate in Italy, and that European legislation does not apply to them,’’ the statement said, noting that the app had been downloaded by millions of people around the globe in just a few days.
DeepSeek’s new chatbot has raised the stakes in the AI technology race, rattling markets and catching up with American generative AI leaders at a fraction of the cost.
As far as I know, ChatGPT is also blocked in Italy. So that seems like a fair decision.
It was, I think it has been unblocked (https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/docweb/10085432#english).
Yes, it’s unblocked for a few weeks after a long investigation. The talian authorities fined OpenAI EUR 15m for GDPR violations. You can find a very detailed analysis about the issues here.
“Contrary to the authority’s findings, the companies declared that they do not operate in Italy, and that European legislation does not apply to them,’
Well they showed balls with that statement, and Italy cuts them right off.
Holy fucking shit it’s depressing that this is literally the best news I’ve seen all morning
Deepseek actually doesn’t run that awfully when I run it locally (cpu only) in ollama, but it feels like it slowed down as the conversation went on with the default 7b model. The 1.5b runs decently though.
Blocks access to “protect” people? How does limiting people’s freedom help?
It says “users’ data”, not “people”. Not sure why you’d suggest otherwise. Italy is protecting against a Chinese company collecting personal data from Italians.
Person tries to use it - gets blocked. Their data did not get collected and used in ways they were not aware of and wouldn’t want. -> They were protected.
In Europe data protection is an inalienable right. There is no freedom to do something that violates fundamental rights.
They tried to investigate if deepseek complies with GDPR. Deepseek said they don’t operate in Europe and don’t have accept European jurisdiction. Italy made sure that statement is true as far as Italy is concerned.
You can still download the models and run them locally.
It doesn’t much. The data has already been collected. All this does is make it harder for Italians from accessing their frontend.
The frontend is likely collecting additional data and we know there’s a layer of censorship built into it but that’s limited to your query strings and some metadata.
It’s important for national security that we all work together to protect US corporate profits.
The same garante blocked chatGPT in March 2023. They are acting based on the law. One thing that half-works in Italy, please, leave it alone.
I remeber the people on R*ddit whining about how nothing ever works in Italy after the ChatGPT ban. I’ve written a rant against this and someone had the gall to comment stating that the privacy reasons were a sham and the ban was due to ChatGPT risking to “offend the average Italian” or something.
