The Belgian Government has prohibited all its employees from using applications from the Chinese artificial intelligence system DeepSeek since Monday, following an analysis by the Belgian Cybersecurity Center.
The ban appears in a circular published by the Minister of Public Action and Modernization, Vanessa Matz (Les Engagés), the Belga agency reported.
It states that all DeepSeek apps must have been removed from employees’ work devices by December 1.
The DeepSeek artificial intelligence language model is considered the Chinese model of the American ChatGPT, but many countries have raised concerns about privacy concerns it raises.
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“Following this analysis and taking into account the risks to the protection of data transmitted to the DeepSeek system, it has been decided to preemptively ban the Chinese system in federal government workplaces,” Matz said.
He added that prohibiting the use of this system “is a matter of surveillance” and that the Government wants its services to offer a “safe and exemplary” environment.
The Belgian federal government includes federal government departments, autonomous agencies, public administrative institutions, the public prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Police.
With information from EFE.
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