Italy’s data protection authority has blocked use of Chinese tech startup DeepSeek’s AI application to protect Italians’ data and announced an investigation into the companies behind the chatbot.

Italy's data protection authority said on Thursday it had blocked Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek over a lack of information on its use of personal data. DeepSeek could not be accessed on Wednesday in Apple or Google app stores in Italy,

The country’s data watchdog says the firm gave it ‘completely insufficient’ answers to questions about what it does with user information.

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot, swiftly rose to the top of app stores this week, and it's just as swiftly rising in priority for data protection watchdog agencies worldwide.

Italy's data protection authority said on Tuesday it was seeking answers from Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) model DeepSeek on its use of personal data.

DeepSeek app has vanished from the Italian App Store and Google Play Store since the country's data watchdog filed a privacy complaint.

DeepSeek AI disappears from Italy’s app stores as regulators question its data practices and concerns grow over user privacy.

The DeepSeek AI chatbot app, powered by its foundational AI models such as V3 and R1, has disappeared from app stores in Italy, according to a report by TechCrunch. This comes a day after the European country’s privacy watchdog sought information from the Chinese AI startup regarding its data collection and storage practices.

The Italian regulator is the first European authority to report it is going after the app. DeepSeek has 20 days to respond to the questions, which puts the deadline on Feb. 17. Consumer groups Euroconsumers and Italy’s Altroconsumo said they’d earlier told the authority that they believed DeepSeek’s data handling breached EU rules.

DeepSeek app is now unavailable in both the Google and Apple app stores as the Italian government launches a data probe.

Italy's data protection authority said on Thursday it had blocked Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek over a lack of information on its use of personal data. The authority, known as Garante,