Microsoft has officially prohibited its employees from using the AI application developed by Chinese startup DeepSeek, citing concerns over data security and potential exposure to Chinese propaganda. This announcement was made by Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith during a Senate hearing focused on the AI competition between the U.S. and China.
“At Microsoft, we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith stated, referring to DeepSeek’s application service available on both desktop and mobile platforms. He further mentioned that Microsoft has not included DeepSeek’s application in its app store due to these concerns.
Smith elaborated that the restriction stems from the risk that data could be stored in China and that DeepSeek’s responses might be influenced by “Chinese propaganda.” DeepSeek’s privacy policy indicates that it stores user data on Chinese servers, making such data subject to Chinese laws, which mandate cooperation with the country’s intelligence agencies. Additionally, DeepSeek heavily censors topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government.
Despite these concerns, Microsoft had previously offered DeepSeek’s R1 model on its Azure cloud service shortly after it gained popularity earlier in the year. However, this differs from offering DeepSeek’s chatbot app itself. Since DeepSeek is open source, anyone can download the model, host it on their own servers, and provide it to clients without sending data back to China. Nonetheless, this does not eliminate other risks, such as the model potentially spreading propaganda or generating insecure code.
During the Senate hearing, Smith mentioned that Microsoft had managed to modify DeepSeek’s AI model to remove “harmful side effects,” though he did not provide specific details on the modifications. In its initial launch of DeepSeek on Azure, Microsoft stated that DeepSeek underwent “rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations” before being made available on Azure.
While DeepSeek’s app is a direct competitor to Microsoft’s own Copilot internet search chat app, Microsoft does not ban all such chat competitors from its Windows app store. For instance, Perplexity is available in the Windows app store, although apps by Microsoft’s rival Google, including the Chrome browser and Google’s chatbot Gemini, did not appear in a webstore search.
“Microsoft Bans Employees from Using Chinese AI App DeepSeek Over Security Concerns!”
