PANews reported on February 1 that according to Voachinese, the Italian Data Protection Authority launched an investigation into the artificial intelligence chatbot of the Chinese startup DeepSeek and said it had banned it from processing the data of Italian users. The Italian Data Protection Authority said that after asking the company about the use of personal data, it received a "completely inadequate" response, so it decided to take action.

The agency said in a statement it had ordered "urgent and immediate restrictions on the processing of data of Italian users by Hangzhou DeepSeek AI and Beijing DeepSeek AI, the Chinese companies that provide the DeepSeek chatbot service".

Meanwhile, authorities have launched an investigation, the statement said.