The Berlin Commissioner for Information Safety has formally requested Google and Apple to take away the DeepSeek AI utility from the applying shops attributable to GDPR violations.
The commissioner, Meike Kamp, alleges that DeepSeek’s proprietor, Hangzhou DeepSeek Synthetic Intelligence, primarily based in Beijing, unlawfully collects knowledge from German customers and transfers them for processing in servers in China.
As per the GDPR and Article 46 (1) particularly, any private knowledge collected from people within the European Union have to be protected in line with the requirements upheld by the regulatory act.
Nevertheless, China has very lax knowledge safety rules and a historical past of extreme knowledge entry requests to non-public entities. Due to this, it’s unlikely that DeepSeek has carried out enough authorized safeguards to ensure its safety to EU requirements.
“The corporate has no department inside the European Union (EU),” explains the commissioner.
“The service is made accessible to customers in Germany, amongst different locations, by means of apps within the Google Play Retailer and Apple App Retailer with German-language descriptions and can be utilized within the German language.”
“This makes the service topic to the provisions of the European Basic Information Safety Regulation (GDPR).”
DeepSeek is a Chinese language AI platform that rose to prominence in January 2025 after the discharge of the third era of its chatbot, which got here with in depth capabilities.
Though this sudden reputation was rapidly tarnished by severe cybersecurity issues that uncovered insecure practices, the platform continued to take pleasure in reputation within the international AI group.
The DeepSeek AI app has 50 million downloads on Google Play, Android’s official app retailer, and 1000’s of rankings on Apple’s App Retailer.
Kamp had requested DeepSeek to voluntarily take away its apps from app shops in Germany this yr on Could 6 however the firm refused to conform.
Therefore, the Berlin authorities now made use of Article 16 of the Digital Providers Act (DSA), which permits them to report unlawful content material on platforms to the respective operators, on this case, Apple and Google.
The 2 tech giants will now must evaluation the commissioner’s report and resolve whether or not DeepSeek AI can be faraway from their shops or not.
Though the request was submitted by a state-level regulator and never the German authorities, there may be coordinationwith different regulators from Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Bremen, in addition to the Federal Community Company (Bundesnetzagentur).
BleepingComputer has contacted Google, Apple, and DeepSeek to touch upon the state of affairs, and we are going to replace this publish after we hear again from them.
Patching used to imply complicated scripts, lengthy hours, and countless fireplace drills. Not anymore.
On this new information, Tines breaks down how fashionable IT orgs are leveling up with automation. Patch quicker, scale back overhead, and deal with strategic work — no complicated scripts required.
