The Czech government banned the use of any services of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek in the Czech public administration due to security concerns, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said on Wednesday.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the government acted after receiving a warning from the national cybersecurity watchdog. The watchdog flagged a threat of unauthorised access to users’ data because DeepSeek is obliged to cooperate with Chinese state authorities.

The move follows similar steps made by some other countries that aimed to protect users’ data, including Italy, which in January blocked access to the chatbot, as well as Australia.

Last month, a German privacy official called on Apple and Google to ban DeepSeek from its app stores over privacy concerns.

The Czech government has distanced itself from some Chinese technology in recent years. In 2018, it stopped using the hardware and software made by telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE after a warning they posed a security threat.

DeepSeek and the Chinese embassy in Prague did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DeepSeek shook the technology world in January with claims that it had developed an AI model to rival those from U.S. firms such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI at much lower cost.

However, it has come under scrutiny in the United States and Europe for its data security policies.

According to its own privacy policy, DeepSeek stores numerous pieces of personal data, such as requests to its AI programme or uploaded files, on computers in China.

DeepSeek was founded in 2023 in Hangzhou, China, and released its first AI large language model later that year.

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