Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order banning the contested synthetic intelligence app DeepSeek and the favored TikTok various RedNote from government-issued units, turning into the primary state to dam the Chinese language apps.
The governor’s problem additionally prohibited Lemon8, one other social media app owned by TikTok’s Chinese language mother or father firm Bytedance, which many turned to on the eve of TikTok’s momentary shutdown in the USA.
“Texas won’t enable the Chinese language Communist Get together to infiltrate our state’s crucial infrastructure by way of data-harvesting AI and social media apps. Texas will proceed to guard and defend our state from hostile international actors,” Abbott mentioned in an announcement.
The rising AI platform DeepSeek took the market by storm after it proved to outperform the US’s OpenAI at a a lot decrease price.
Final week, the app triggered tech shares to dip by $1 trillion, creating panic on Wall Road.
The chatbot has raised safety issues not dissimilar to people who led to TikTok’s ban. The app, which has been downloaded over 2 million instances since its debut on Jan. 15, reportedly collects and shops US person knowledge in China.
All firms primarily based in China are required by regulation to share any knowledge with the Chinese language Communist Get together authorities upon request — doubtlessly placing American person knowledge in fingers unfriendly to the US.
Others have already began blocking the AI chatbot as a result of safety issues, together with the US Navy.
RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, was the lifeboat for TikTok’s sinking Titanic because the ban loomed in early January. It’s a well-liked social media app in China and different components of East Asia, together with Malaysia and Taiwan.
TikTok has already been banned on authorities units since former President Joe Biden signed an act prohibiting it in Dec. 2022. The app’s future continues to be shaky following President Trump’s eleventh-hour intervention the day earlier than his inauguration granting ByteDance extra time to promote the app.
The favored app was restricted in the USA for mere hours on Jan. 18, randomly shutting down round 10:30 p.m. regardless of many customers believing they’d till midnight. It was up once more in just a little over 12 hours following an evening of widespread confusion.
At the moment, Microsoft is believed to be a frontrunner for TikTok’s buy.
With Put up wires