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4 months ago
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Earlier this year, the AI scene experienced a major shock when a little-known Chinese company named DeepSeek sent tremors through Wall Street, challenging giants like Meta with models that were dirt cheap and shockingly powerful. The major concern, of course, was its connection to China, leading to some serious side-eye from countries like Italy and even a ban on its use at agencies like NASA.
That concern just got a lot more official in Germany. Today, the country's Berlin data protection authority reported DeepSeek to Apple and Google, asking them to remove the chatbot from their German app stores.
The reason for this, according to the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (translated), is that the app is illegally shipping user data straight to China. This includes everything you can imagine: chat histories, uploaded files, and even location and device information. All of it gets processed and stored on Chinese servers.
The problem, as Commissioner Meike Kamp laid out, is that the European Union has extremely strict data privacy laws. You cannot just send European user data to another country unless that country's laws offer similar protections. China does not make that list.
Kamp's office claims DeepSeek's data transfer is unlawful because Chinese authorities have sweeping access to information held by companies there, and users have zero legal recourse if something goes wrong. Plus, DeepSeek failed to prove that German user data is safe.
The authority first contacted DeepSeek back in May and told the company to either stop the illegal data transfers or get its app out of German stores. The company did nothing. So the commissioner used powers under the Digital Services Act to formally report the app to Google and Apple.
The pressure is now squarely on the two tech giants, who are legally obligated to promptly review the report and decide whether to boot the highly controversial AI from their platforms in the country.
