Microsoft employees are not allowed to use Deepseek due to the security of data and propaganda concerns, said Microsoft Vice President Brad Smith at a Senate Senate session.
“In Microsoft we do not allow our employees to use the Deepseek application,” Smith said, referring to the Deepseek application service (which is available on both desktop and mobile.
Smith said Microsoft has not placed Deepseek in his app store on those concerns, as well.
Although many organizations and even places have imposed restrictions on Deepseek, this is the first time Microsoft has come to public for such a ban.
Smith said the restriction stems from the risk that data will be stored in China and that Deepseek’s responses could be affected by “Chinese propaganda”.
Deepseek’s privacy policy says it stores user data on Chinese servers. Such data are subject to Chinese law, which obliges cooperation with the country’s intelligence agencies. Deepseek also censors many topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government.
Despite Smith’s critical comments on Deepseek, Microsoft offered Deepseek’s R1 model to his service Azure Cloud shortly after she went viral earlier this year.
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But this is a little different from the delivery of the Deepseek Chatbot application itself. Since Deepseek is open source, one can download the model, store it on their servers, and offer to their customers without sending the data back to China.
However, this does not remove other risks such as the model that spreads propaganda or generates unsafe code.
During the senate’s hearing, Smith said Microsoft had managed to enter the Deepseek’s model and “change” it to remove “harmful side effects”. Microsoft has not explained exactly what he did to the Deepseek model, referring to Techcrunch in Smith’s remarks.
At his initial start of Deepseek in Azure, Microsoft wrote that Deepseek was subjected to “rigorous red team and security ratings” before coming to Azure.
While we cannot help emphasize that the Deepseek app is also a direct competitor of its own Microsoft Internet search -search, Microsoft does not stop all such conversations competitors from its Windows app store.
Attempting is available at the Windows app store, for example. Although every app from the Microsoft Google Archive (including the Google CHROME and Chatbot Chatbot browser) did not appear in our online search.