What are the penalties for using the DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) model? If you are in the US, it could be up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $1 million for individuals or a fine of $100 million for companies found guilty of using the Chinese-developed AI.
The bill imposing these severe penalties was recently proposed by Republican Senator Josh Hawley. According to him, the bill is proposed to prevent US citizens from helping to advance the AI capabilities of the People's Republic of China.
Although Chinese-made AI models like DeepSeek have not yet been banned, security analysts in the US have already warned that user data is being sent to browsers located in China. This week we saw Australia and Taiwan ban the use of DeepSeek on government-owned devices and civil servants due to security risks.
The AI technology war between the US and China heated up two weeks ago after DeepSeek R1 was released as open source. Its capabilities are higher than the paid AI models offered by OpenAI and Meta, causing the value of several US technology companies alone to fall by up to $1 trillion.
DeepSeek is said to be able to train their AI models at a much lower cost using hardware that does not have the same processing power.