First TikTok, now DeepSeek. Pennsylvania treasurer bans China-based AI chatbot

Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity banned the AI platform DeepSeek from all treasury-issued devices because the chatbot originated in China.

The startup DeepSeek was founded in 2023 in China, and the company gained widespread attention after it released an artificial intelligence chatbot on Apple and Google app stores in January. The Chat GPT competitor caused a stir in the American AI industry and became the most downloaded free app for iPhones late last month. Its launch made Wall Street tech superstars’ stocks tumble.

“Our team at Treasury deals with billions of dollars that belong to the residents of the Commonwealth, so keeping our computer network secure is a top priority,” Garrity said in a statement announcing the move. “There are growing fears that DeepSeek is directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), potentially allowing the Chinese government to obtain sensitive government or personal data.”

Banning the app, she said, “is necessary to ensure the safety of Pennsylvanians’ hard-earned tax dollars and other important, sensitive information entrusted” to her office. The ban applies to laptops, cell phones, and any other device that can connect to the internet.

Garrity said in an email that artificial intelligence tools like DeepSeek “will expand the ways our adversaries can try to infiltrate and breach our securities,” and that “it’s especially concerning when an AI tool originated outside of the United States and is not subjected to our laws.”

“It’s critical to block applications that originated by and are controlled by our adversaries,” said Garrity, whose agency was the first in Pennsylvania to ban TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, from its devices in 2022. As treasurer, Garrity has also divested most of the state’s Chinese-associated securities over her geopolitical and human rights concerns.

All agencies that fall under Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office had already banned DeepSeek shortly after it was made available to the public and well before Garrity’s announcement, according to the governor’s office, which did not publicly announce the move.

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Some security researchers found that the website version of the new chatbot has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States. And in its privacy policy, DeepSeek acknowledged storing data on servers inside the People’s Republic of China.

The chatbot appears to censor answers on sensitive Chinese topics, a practice commonly seen on China’s internet. In 2023, China issued regulations requiring companies to conduct a security review and obtain approvals before their products can be publicly launched.

Albert Fox Cahn, an anti-surveillance advocate who founded and directs the New York-based Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), said he views Garrity’s announcement as a “PR stunt” rooted in what he called “selective privacy concerns” that are more about politics than cybersecurity.

“The idea that you’re making this blanket ban for all treasury computers, not just the ones that have access to personal information, not just the ones that have access to, you know, state funds, but literally every device in the department, to me, that feels more like a PR stunt than a real response to the privacy threat,” he said.

Cahn argued that American social media platforms and chatbots also pose a privacy risk that should be taken seriously, and that the treasury devices with access to sensitive information should block social media and AI sites anyway.

“I don’t trust DeepSeek,” he said. “I don’t trust it with my data. I just don’t think that somehow it’s automatically worse when our data is taken by a foreign government, and sometimes the most dangerous people to have our data are the governments here at home.”

Garrity did not name any specific companies when asked whether any American social media websites or chatbots like ChatGPT are also banned but said that “many websites and apps, including new AI tools, are blocked automatically by our stringent rules,” which allows time “for a thorough review so we can take any necessary steps to decide if a block should become permanent, or we should lift it.”

This article contains information from the Associated Press.