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One Australian business has prevented staff from using the technology, oke.zone others are scrambling for recommendations on its cybersecurity implications - while federal government ministers are prompting caution.

But others have actually invited DeepSeek's arrival, calling for Australia to follow China's lead in developing effective yet less energy-intensive AI innovation.

In the days since the Chinese business launched its R1 expert system model and publicly launched its chatbot and app, it has upended the AI market.

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Several global market leaders saw their market values drop after the launch, as DeepSeek revealed AI might be developed using a portion of the expense and processing needed to train designs such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.

Its arrival may indicate a new market shift, but for federal government and business, the effect is uncertain. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival caught federal governments and businesses by surprise as staff started to try out the new AI innovation, a minimum of for the arrival of Deepseek, some had a playbook.

Business as typical

A for Telstra stated the company had "a rigorous procedure to evaluate all AI tools, abilities, and utilize cases in our business", including a list of authorized generative AI tools, and guidelines on how to utilize them.

For now at Telstra, DeepSeek is not approved and its usage is not encouraged (although it's not officially blocked).

"Our favored partner is MS Copilot, and we're rolling out 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our workers."

Other companies looked for instant advice on whether DeepSeek need to be adopted.

Major Australian cybersecurity company CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, stated consumers had currently approached the company for recommendations on whether the technology was safe.

"That's not a surprise, since it appears the entire world has been in a bit of a DeepSeek frenzy - both the economically and market inclined and those with the security lens," Mansted said.

DeepSeek and government

CyberCX today took the uncommon step of quickly releasing suggestions advising organisations, including federal government departments and those keeping sensitive info, strongly think about restricting access to DeepSeek on work devices.

"We understand that there is no proactive policy here from federal government ... We've been down this road before," Mansted stated. "We've had debates about TikTok, about Chinese security electronic cameras, about Huawei in the telco network, and we constantly act after the truth, not before the reality ... Here, particularly because the risks are around compromise of delicate details, in terms of any details that you take into this AI assistant: it's going directly to China.

"We thought we required to act quicker this time."

Under federal AI policy executed in September 2024, firms have till completion of February 2025 to release transparency files about their usage of AI.

But understanding who makes decisions on the specific usage of DeepSeek in the federal government has shown challenging. The attorney general of the United States's department, which made the decision to prohibit TikTok use on federal government gadgets, referred questions to the Digital Transformation Agency, which in turn referred enquires to the Department of Home Affairs.

Home Affairs was asked on Thursday for its main policy and did not provide an action by the time of publication.

Familiar disputes ...

A few of the response in Australia to DeepSeek is by now familiar. There have been calls to ban the technology, amid issue over how the Chinese government may access user data - an echo of the days Huawei was prohibited from the NBN and 5G rollouts in Australia, and more just recently, of the dispute over banning TikTok.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a strong critic of the China federal government, said this week that Australia "can not continue the present technique of reacting to each new tech advancement". It called for a tech method covering AI that included investing in sovereign AI capabilities.

The industry minister, Ed Husic, stated on Tuesday it was too early to make a choice on whether DeepSeek was a security risk.

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"If there is anything that presents a danger in the national interest, wifidb.science we will constantly keep an open mind and watch what takes place. I think it's too early to leap to conclusions on that," he stated. "But, again, forum.altaycoins.com if we need to act, then responsible governments do."

He worried that Australia is "in the final stages" of preparing its response and would develop its own regulative settings.

"The US is flagging their approach. The EU has theirs. Canada also will have a various method. And our regional partners as well are taking a look at this," he said.