Following Italy’s lead, calls are growing for Greece to ban the Chinese-developed chatbot DeepSeek. The app’s latest release on January 20th caused turmoil in Western tech markets.
Italy banned the chatbot on Thursday, preempting the 20-day deadline given to Hangzhou-based DeepSeek to address concerns about user data privacy. The Italian government acted without waiting for DeepSeek’s response.
Greek digital rights NGO, Homo Digitalis, has urged regulatory authorities to suspend DeepSeek’s distribution and use within Greece temporarily. They demand satisfactory answers from DeepSeek regarding handling user data before the chatbot can be reinstated.
“The legally required safeguards appear to be absent,” stated Lefteris Chelioudakis, executive director of Homo Digitalis.
While DeepSeek’s user base in Greece remains unknown, the smartphone app has seen 2.6 million downloads globally.
DeepSeek is a machine learning model designed for searching within deep neural networks; however, it is not widely accessible as a standard tool or model for local execution.