Congress MP demands ban on Chinese AI app DeepSeek

New Delhi: Chinese AI app DeepSeek should be banned in India for hurting people's sentiments by refusing to acknowledge Arunachal Pradesh as an integral part of India, Congress Gowaal K Padavi said in Lok Sabha on Monday while demanding that the country should develop its own Artificial Intelligence technology.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour, Padavi urged the Ministry of External Affairs to issue notice to China while insisting that India should not use American or Chinese technology. DeepSeek, which is a Chinese AI company that develops large language models (LLMs), is based in Hangzhou in Zhejiang.

He said he had a query on Tibet and it answered that the region has always been under the control of China and when he asked about Uttar Pradesh and then Andhra Pradesh, 'DeepSeek' gave a detailed answer.

However, when asked about Arunachal Pradesh, "DeepSeek refused to give any specific answer and said sorry it is beyond my current scope, let's talk about something else."

Padavi said the answer came as there is a Sino-India border dispute and the Chinese ambassador had earlier insisted that the whole of Arunachal is part of China. The app refuses to accept Arunachal as an integral part of India, he said adding, it "seems very odd" as India recognises the north-eastern part as its integral part.

"This is shocking, a lack of respect for India...These kinds of answers by foreign technology have no place in India and should be banned," he said, adding the MEA should issue a notice to China for hurting the sentiments of Indians.

The Union government has last month instructed its officials not to download or use AI tools and apps such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek in office computers and devices, as it poses confidentiality risks to data and documents.