Microsoft workers aren’t allowed to make use of DeepSeek because of information safety and propaganda issues, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith stated in a Senate listening to right now.
“At Microsoft we don’t enable our workers to make use of the DeepSeek app,” Smith stated, referring to DeepSeek’s utility service (which is offered on each desktop and cellular.)
Smith stated Microsoft hasn’t put DeepSeek in its app retailer over these issues, both.
Though a lot of organizations and even nations 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 chance that information will probably be saved in China and that DeepSeek’s solutions could possibly be influenced by “Chinese language propaganda.”
DeepSeek’s privateness coverage states it shops consumer information on Chinese language servers. Such information is topic to Chinese language legislation, which mandates cooperation with the nation’s intelligence companies. DeepSeek additionally closely censors subjects thought-about delicate by the Chinese language authorities.
Regardless of Smith’s important feedback about DeepSeek, Microsoft supplied up DeepSeek’s R1 mannequin on its Azure cloud service shortly after it went viral earlier this 12 months.
Techcrunch occasion
Berkeley, CA
|
June 5
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 supply it to their purchasers with out sending the info again to China.
That, nonetheless, doesn’t take away different dangers just like the mannequin spreading propaganda or producing insecure code.
Throughout the Senate listening to, Smith stated that Microsoft had managed to go inside DeepSeek’s AI mannequin and “change” it to take away “dangerous uncomfortable 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 will’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 opponents from its Home windows app retailer.
Perplexity is offered 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.
