Finance Ministry Asks Employees To Not Use ChatGPT, DeepSeek: Report

Finance Ministry Asks Employees To Not Use ChatGPT, DeepSeek: Report

SUMMARY

The finance ministry has issued an advisory asking employees to avoid using AI tools like ChatGPT and DeepSeek for official work, citing government data confidentiality risks

The directive comes as several countries including Australia, Italy and Taiwan have implemented similar restrictions on DeepSeek over security concerns

DeepSeek has emerged as the most downloaded mobile app across 140 markets, with India accounting for 15.6% of its 16 Mn downloads since January launch, outpacing ChatGPT's initial adoption rate

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 contributing the largest pie 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.

Last week, union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw India will soon host DeepSeek on local servers to address the privacy concerns regarding the cross-border data transfer.

Back then, the minister said in a press conference on IndiaAI Mission that since DeepSeek is an open source AI model and can be hosted on Indian servers.

Earlier last month, the electronic and IT ministry (MeitY) released the draft rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act for public consultations till February 18.

The draft says that data fiduciaries (entities that determine how personal data is processed) will need to provide data principals (end users whose data they are collecting) all specific details on the basis of which they can give an informed consent to the latter on whether they can use their personal data or not.

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Finance Ministry Asks Employees To Not Use ChatGPT, DeepSeek: Report-Inc42 Media
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