China has hit back at the Australian government’s banning of DeepSeek on all public sector devices, labelling it “ideological discrimination”.

Services offered by Chinese AI company DeepSeek have been banned from Australian government systems and devices.

Australia has banned DeepSeek from all government devices and systems over what it says is the security risk the Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup poses. DeepSeek stunned the world in January when it unveiled a chatbot which matched the performance level of US rivals, while claiming it had a much lower training cost.

Australia has officially banned the DeepSeek chatbot from all government devices following advice from security agencies regarding potential privacy and malware risks associated with the

Queensland and Western Australia have become the latest state governments to ban the use of DeepSeek on government devices. The moves come as a response to a directive issued by Canberra banning federal public servants from accessing and installing the China-developed artificial intelligence app over national security concerns.

After considering threat and risk analysis, I have determined that the use of DeepSeek products, applications and web services poses an unacceptable level of security risk to the Australian Government.

Australia has banned DeepSeek AI services from all government systems and devices, becoming one of the first countries to take direct action against a Chinese artificial intelligence startup that shook Silicon Valley and global markets this year.