DeepSeek stir: US Navy ban, Trump administration’s comments, India’s stand

The US Navy issued a warning to all its personnel, calling for a ban on using the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) platform DeepSeek, according to reports.

It suggested that the Navy banned Chinese AI because of security concerns.

Trump administration’s stand

The Commerce Secretary in Trump’s cabinet, Howard Lutnick has reportedly been vocal about rising competition from China. 

The competition, which proved to be too hot to handle for the US stock market when selling tech stocks led to a significant sump in US markets. 

On January 27, DeepSeek's downloads on the App Store surpassed ChatGPT's, leading to Nvidia losing $593 billion on the market with a 17% nosedive.

Lutnick, on similar lines to ChatGPT, who suspects that its data has reportedly been used by DeepSeek to train the latter's AI, reportedly said that the eastern competitors are allowed to compete, but should stop using 'our' tools to compete.

OpenAI’s probe into DeepSeek

OpenAI now suspects that ChatGPT data has reportedly been used by DeepSeek to train its cheap AI models. Sam Altman-run OpenAI told the Financial Times that it found evidence linking DeepSeek to the use of “distillation,” which is a common technique developers use to train AI models by extracting data from large language models (LLMs).

OpenAI and Microsoft are now probing whether the Chinese rival used their APIs to train DeepSeek’s own models.

OpenAI reportedly spent $100 million to train its GPT-4 model. According to David Sacks, US President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence czar, “it is possible” that IP theft had occurred in the case of DeepSeek.

“There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models and I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this,” Sacks told a US-based media house.

In a statement, OpenAI said, “We know PRC (China) based companies — and others — are constantly trying to distil the models of leading US AI companies”.

Europe’s concerns

Meanwhile, Euroconsumers, a coalition of consumer groups in Europe, has filed a complaint to the Italian Data Protection Authority related to how DeepSeek handles personal data in relation to GDPR.

The Italian DPA said that “the data of millions of Italians is at risk” and has given DeepSeek 20 days to respond.

DeepSeek is backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund. AI enthusiast Liang Wenfeng co-founded High-Flyer in 2015.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek‘s Android app has taken the top spot on Google Play Store. The app is essentially a ChatGPT alternative that’s powered by the Chinese lab’s V3 model.

India addresses privacy concerns

Indian servers will host the new Chinese artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek, along with addressing privacy concerns around it, Union Minister of Railways and Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said on Thursday. 

Addressing a press briefing here, the Union Minister said hosting DeepSeek on Indian servers will address cross-border data transfers.

"DeepSeek is open source and will host it on Indian servers soon. This will address the privacy concerns regarding cross-border data transfer," the Minister said.

Vaishnaw also highlighted the progress made by the country in the IndiaAI Mission, which has already far surpassed its initial GPU targets.

With 18,693 GPUs now available, the initiative aims to provide resources to researchers, startups, and businesses across the country. Notably, 15,000 high-end GPUs have been procured, including 1,480 H200 GPUs.

At the same time, models like DeepSeek and ChatGPT were trained using 2,000 and 25,000 GPUs, respectively.

An estimated $30 billion will be invested in India for hyperscalers and data centres in the next two to three years, the Minister informed.

"Roughly 10,000 GPUs are now available for use starting today," said Vaishnaw.

The Minister also informed of a common computing facility for researchers that will be operational within two days. This facility will serve as a vital resource for various AI projects in India.

(With inputs from syndicated feed)