Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into DeepSeek last week, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company.
DeepSeek launched on January 20th, and it overtook ChatGPT’s spot as the top downloaded app on the Apple store in a week.
A day after Deepseek became public, President Donald Trump announced a $100 billion joint venture investing in AI infrastructure. This joint venture could increase to $500 billion.
Paxton is looking into the company due to its privacy practices and claims that its AI model rivals the most advanced AI models in the world.
The attorney general said he notified the company, which is tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that its policies violate the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act.
Paxton sent third-party Civil Investigative Demands to Google and Apple to analyze Deepseek’s application and the documentation these companies received to make this AI app available to people.
“DeepSeek appears to be no more than a proxy for the CCP to undermine American AI dominance and steal the data of our citizens,” said Paxton.
“That’s why I’m announcing a thorough investigation and calling on Google and Apple to cooperate immediately by providing all relevant documents related to the DeepSeek app,” he said. “The United States and Texas will continue to be at the forefront of global AI innovation, and any CCP-aligned company that tries to undermine that dominance by violating the rights of Texans and illegally undercutting American technology companies will face the full force of the law.”
Last month, the attorney general banned the DeepSeek platform on the Texas Attorney General’s Office devices due to security concerns and ties to the CCP.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott banned this and other Chinese-backed AI platforms on Texas government-issued devices in February.
Also this month, a bi-partisan bill was introduced in the House to ban DeepSeek on all U.S. government devices.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul banned the platform on state government devices last week.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at zschmidt1717@gmail.com. Follow Zachery on Twitter @zacheryschmidt2.
