British Columbia is banning the Chinese-owned artificial intelligence application DeepSeek from government-managed devices.
In a message sent to B.C. civil servants late Wednesday afternoon, Chief Information Officer Hayden Lansdell wrote that his office “has reviewed this application and determined it represents an unacceptable risk to government's systems.”
Lansdell said his office “will proactively block all web access to this application” starting Thursday. “If you have already installed this on your government-managed mobile device, you will be contacted and asked to remove it”.
His office will also “continue to monitor our systems to ensure they are protected from new installations.”
The provincial government had previously banned China-based social media application TikTok and messaging apps WeChat and ToTok from devices it manages.
DeepSeek-R1 was released to the public Jan. 20 amid claims it is as good or better, and much cheaper, than AI models available from U.S. companies.
Based in Hangzhou and controlled by High-Flyer hedge fund co-founder Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek is also open source, meaning its source code is freely available and can be modified and redistributed by anyone.
Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and the Netherlands have already banned DeepSeek on government devices.
A proposed bill in the United States would enact a similar ban there within 60 days amid concerns “hidden links” in the tool “could potentially send data to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company.”
In B.C., Lansdell’s message to public servants failed to specify the risks but stressed the need to strike a balance between the benefits of using AI and the need to protect the government’s systems and maintain “the highest standards of security.”
“In this instance, we have determined that the risk associated with DeepSeek is too high, and we cannot confidently ensure or commit to the level of security required to use it,” Lansdell wrote.
Lansdell’s federal counterpart, Chief Information Officer Dominic Rochon, sent a similar message to Canadian officials Thursday, the National Post reported.
“Due to serious privacy concerns associated with the inappropriate collection and retention of sensitive personal information,” Rochon wrote, “and as a precautionary measure to protect government networks and data, it is recommended that departments and agencies restrict the use of the DeepSeek chatbot on government devices.”
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