US bans DeepSeek AI from government use as tech tension with China continues

The United States has prohibited the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology from the Chinese firm DeepSeek within most government systems, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS has banned all civilian government agencies, including the Treasury, State and Justice departments, from utilizing DeepSeek or any technology that employs its AI models.

DeepSeek, an open-source AI model, has gained popularity due to its cost-effectiveness compared to closed models like Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, or OpenAI's Codex. The ban, which went into effect at the end of July, stems from the US's ongoing tensions with China in the tech sector. While the DHS did not disclose specific security concerns, it follows previous criticism of Chinese AI from the Trump administration and American firms.

The ban excludes agencies within the Department of Defence. Despite the order, DeepSeek's AI models are already integrated into offerings from US tech companies such as Snowflake, Vercel, and OpenRouter. The company's servers have experienced downtime due to high demand, and its free chatbot app is among the most downloaded apps on the Apple App Store.

DeepSeek's development costs are significantly lower than those of US AI firms, with its debut model trained for about $6m and OpenAI's GPT-4 for roughly $100m.