The finance ministry has issued a directive prohibiting its officers from using AI tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek for official reasons, citing concerns over data privacy and security.

“It has been determined that AI tools and AI apps (such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek etc) in the office computers and devices pose risks for confidentiality of Govt, data and documents,” Reuters reported, citing the internal advisory.

The move aligns India with countries like Australia and Italy, which have imposed similar restrictions on DeepSeek, citing privacy and security vulnerabilities.

Besides, Taiwan has also prohibited government agencies from using DeepSeek’s AI model, flagging national information security risks.

Chinese artificial intelligence chatbot DeepSeek has become the most downloaded mobile app across 140 markets, with India of new users.

According to data from Appfigures, as cited by Bloomberg, India accounted for 15.6% of all downloads across platforms since the app’s launch in January and became the number one android app on the Google Play Store in the US this week.

Within 18 days of launch, DeepSeek garnered 16 Mn downloads, nearly doubling the initial adoption rate of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which saw 9 Mn downloads in the same period.

(The story will be updated soon)

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