SEOUL: Government agencies and major companies in South Korea are rushing to block access to Chinese artificial intelligence service DeepSeek, amid concerns about user data collection.

The Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs issued a mandatory direction for all government entities to "prevent the use or installation of DeepSeek products, applications and web services and where found remove all existing instances of DeepSeek products,

Australia has banned DeepSeek from all government devices on the advice of security agencies, a top official said Wednesday, citing privacy and malware risks posed by China's breakout AI program.