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Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, Brad Smith, recently disclosed that Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek. He said the Microsoft DeepSeek app ban is due to data security and propaganda concerns.
At the Senate hearing, the vice chairman mentioned that “At Microsoft, we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app.” He referred to DeepSeek’s application service, which is available on both desktop and mobile.
Data Security and Propaganda Fears Fuel Microsoft DeepSeek App Ban
Furthermore, he noted that Microsoft hasn’t put DeepSeek in its app store over those concerns. Initially, TechPolyp reported how the US Navy banned the use of DeepSeek. In the same vein, several organisations and even countries have imposed restrictions on DeepSeek. However, this is the first time Microsoft has gone public about such a ban.
Moreover, Smith said the Microsoft DeepSeek app ban could easily trigger a campaign of calumny against the company. This focuses on the risk of data being stored in China. Additionally, “Chinese propaganda could influence DeepSeek’s answers,” especially after the AI threatened America’s dominance.
Meanwhile, DeepSeek’s privacy policy confirms that it stores user data on Chinese servers. Such data is subject to Chinese law, which demands cooperation with the country’s intelligence bodies. The company also heavily censors topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive.
DeepSeek’s China Ties Raise Concerns Despite Azure Hosting
Undeterred by Smith’s critical comments about DeepSeek, Microsoft recently offered up DeepSeek’s R1 model on its Azure cloud service, shortly after it went viral earlier this year.
However, that’s a bit different from offering DeepSeek’s chatbot app. The fact that DeepSeek is open source has made it susceptible to anyone downloading the model and storing it on their servers. Furthermore, anyone can offer it to their clients equally without sending the data back to China. Unfortunately, this doesn’t remove other risks, like the model spreading propaganda or generating insecure code.
Smith noted during the Senate hearing that Microsoft had managed to access DeepSeek’s AI model and switch it to remove harmful side effects. Following the Microsoft DeepSeek app ban, the company did not elaborate precisely what it did to DeepSeek’s model. However, the company initially noted that DeepSeek underwent rigorous red teaming at the launch of DeepSeek on Azure. Moving forward, the company added some safety evaluations” before they put it on Azure.
We are uncertain whether DeepSeek’s app is also a competitor to Microsoft’s Copilot internet search chat app. Nevertheless, Microsoft doesn’t ban all such chat competitors from its Windows app store. For example, Perplexity is available in the Windows app store. However, when we did our website search, no apps by Microsoft’s archrival Google (including the Chrome browser and Google’s chatbot Gemini) appeared.
