Microsoft employees are prohibited from using the DeepSeek app, announces the president.
The vice president and president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, announced that the company's employees are not allowed to use DeepSeek due to concerns related to data security and the spread of propaganda.
During a Senate hearing, Brad Smith, president and vice president of Microsoft, announced that the company has banned its employees from using the DeepSeek application due to concerns about data security and the influence of propaganda. Smith emphasized that DeepSeek, available on both desktop and mobile devices, is not found in Microsoft's app store for the same reasons.
Although many organizations and even countries have implemented restrictions around DeepSeek, this is the first time Microsoft has publicly stated its position regarding the ban of this application. Smith mentioned that the main reason is the risk of user data being stored in China, which could lead to responses provided by the application being influenced by "Chinese propaganda." According to its privacy policy, DeepSeek stores user information on Chinese servers, which is subject to the country's legislation that requires cooperation with intelligence agencies.
Additionally, DeepSeek significantly censors topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive. Despite criticism of this application, Microsoft had decided to make its R1 model of DeepSeek available on the Azure service shortly after it went viral. However, this is different from offering the DeepSeek chatbot application itself. Being open-source, anyone can download the model, store it on their own servers, and offer it to their clients without having to send data back to China. Nonetheless, this does not eliminate other associated risks such as the dissemination of propaganda or the generation of insecure code.
During the hearing, Smith indicated that Microsoft has managed to access the DeepSeek AI model to "modify it" and remove "harmful side effects." However, specific details about the nature of those changes were not provided. In its initial launch of DeepSeek on Azure, Microsoft assured that the application went through "rigorous security assessment processes."
It is worth noting that, although DeepSeek directly competes with Microsoft's internet search chat application, Copilot, the company has not banned the presence of all competing applications in its Windows store. For example, Perplexity is available in the app store. However, no Google applications, Microsoft’s main rival, were found in the search of its store.
