Microsoft workers aren’t allowed to make use of DeepSeek because of knowledge safety and propaganda considerations, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith stated in a Senate listening to right now.
“At Microsoft we don’t permit our workers to make use of the DeepSeek app,” Smith stated, referring to DeepSeek’s software service (which is on the market on each desktop and cellular.)
Smith stated Microsoft hasn’t put DeepSeek in its app retailer over these considerations, both.
Though a lot of organizations and even international locations have imposed restrictions on DeepSeek, that is the primary time Microsoft has gone public about such a ban.
Smith stated the restriction stems from the danger that knowledge might be saved in China and that DeepSeek’s solutions could possibly be influenced by “Chinese language propaganda.”
DeepSeek’s privateness coverage states it shops person knowledge on Chinese language servers. Such knowledge is topic to Chinese language legislation, which mandates cooperation with the nation’s intelligence businesses. DeepSeek additionally closely censors matters thought-about delicate by the Chinese language authorities.
Regardless of Smith’s crucial feedback about DeepSeek, Microsoft supplied up DeepSeek’s R1 mannequin on its Azure cloud service shortly after it went viral earlier this yr.
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However that’s a bit completely different from providing DeepSeek’s chatbot app itself. Since DeepSeek is open supply, anyone can obtain the mannequin, retailer it on their very own servers and provide it to their shoppers with out sending the information again to China.
That, nonetheless, doesn’t take away different dangers just like the mannequin spreading propaganda or producing insecure code.
In the course of the Senate listening to, Smith stated that Microsoft had managed to go inside DeepSeek’s AI mannequin and “change” it to take away “dangerous unwanted side effects.” Microsoft didn’t elaborate on precisely what it did to DeepSeek’s mannequin, referring TechCrunch to Smith’s remarks.
In its preliminary launch of DeepSeek on Azure, Microsoft wrote that DeepSeek underwent “rigorous pink teaming and security evaluations” earlier than it was placed on Azure.
Whereas we are able to’t assist mentioning that DeepSeek’s app can be a direct competitor to Microsoft’s personal Copilot web search chat app, Microsoft doesn’t ban all such chat rivals from its Home windows app retailer.
Perplexity is on the market within the Home windows app retailer, for example. Though any apps by Microsoft’s archrival Google (together with the Chrome browser and Google’s chatbot Gemini) didn’t floor in our webstore search.