Note:<\/strong> Excite Labs has also choosen not to utilise Deepseek despite the click \/ token cost savings that a switch would enable. The risks included unauthroised data, conversations, and personal information sharing to unknown entities overseas, Chinese Government filtering of requests, results and responses and the less than stella response accuracy performance of the Large Langauge Model implemented<\/mark><\/strong><\/em>.
Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek has been banned from Australian federal government devices after it was found to pose “an unacceptable risk” to national security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Confirmation of the ban, which comes after Information Age<\/em> exclusively confirmed a New South Wales government department banned DeepSeek last week<\/a>, means federal government bodies must immediately remove DeepSeek from their devices and internal systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Large Language Model (LLM) has raised concerns in Western nations because the data it collects is stored in China, where companies must comply with data requests from the Chinese government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The announcement also follows similar moves by Taiwan, Italy, the US state of Texas, and parts of the US military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAfter considering threat and risk analysis, I have determined that the use of DeepSeek products, applications and web services poses an unacceptable level of security risk to the Australian Government,\u201d Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster wrote in a direction issued by the department<\/a> late on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEntities must manage the risks arising from DeepSeek\u2019s extensive collection of data and exposure of that data to extrajudicial directions from a foreign government that conflict with Australian law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ban won’t apply to corporate bodies such as NBN Co and Australia Post, and the government said some exemptions may be granted \u201cwhere the use [of DeepSeek] is necessary for the carrying out of national security or regulatory functions, including compliance and law enforcement functions\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Victoria and South Australia were among the states and territories also investigating DeepSeek<\/a> for potential security threats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said while AI was “a technology full of potential and opportunity\u201d, the government \u201cwill not hesitate to act when our agencies identify a national security risk\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Our approach is country-agnostic and focused on the risk to the Australian government and our assets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told ABC News<\/em> the Coalition “welcomed the decision” to ban DeepSeek on federal devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The government’s special envoy for cybersecurity and digital resilience, Andrew Charlton, told ABC News<\/em> on Wednesday that the ban was \u201cabsolutely not a symbolic move\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe don’t want to expose government systems to these applications,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat’s the main source of the risk and that’s why this ban is important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Generative AI apps such as DeepSeek posed three main risks, Charlton said, including the possibility private information could be uploaded, the information provided by DeepSeek may not be accurate and contain political bias, and it could expose users to malware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe encourage people not to click links, and to be careful about where and when they download these applications,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DeepSeek has been one of the most popular free apps in Apple\u2019s App Store for the past week, and remained at number one on Wednesday morning, ahead of OpenAI\u2019s popular ChatGPT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Dana Mckay, a senior lecturer at RMIT University\u2019s School of Computing Technologies, said Chinese-made services such as DeepSeek were being banned because the Chinese government could request data from the company \u201cnot just when a crime has been committed, but also for economic or social reasons\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDeepSeek even collects keystroke patterns, which can be used to identify individuals, potentially allowing them to match in-work searches with leisure time searches, potentially leading to national security risks,\u201d Mckay said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The banning of DeepSeek from federal devices comes after the Australian government banned Chinese social media app TikTok<\/a> from commonwealth systems in April 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGovernment says it \u2018will not hesitate to act\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ia.acs.org.au\/content\/dam\/ia\/article\/images\/2025\/deepseek%20on%20laptop%20deepseek.jpg\")
DeepSeek is banned from federal government devices and systems, but can still be used on personal devices not on government networks. Photo: Shutterstock<\/em><\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\nAustralians told to ‘be careful’<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![](\"https:\/\/ia.acs.org.au\/content\/dam\/ia\/article\/images\/2024\/Tom%20Williams%20bio%20shot.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n