One Australian company has dissuaded staff from using the technology, others are rushing for guidance on its cybersecurity implications - while federal government ministers are urging caution.
But others have actually invited DeepSeek's arrival, requiring Australia to follow China's lead in yet less energy-intensive AI technology.
In the days considering that the Chinese business released its R1 synthetic intelligence model and openly launched its chatbot and app, it has upended the AI market.
- Register for Guardian Australia's breaking news email
Several worldwide market leaders saw their market values drop after the launch, higgledy-piggledy.xyz as DeepSeek showed AI could be developed utilizing a portion of the cost and processing needed to train models such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.
Its arrival may indicate a new market shift, however for federal government and business, ribewiki.dk the impact is unclear. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival caught federal governments and services by surprise as personnel began to check out the new AI technology, at least for the arrival of Deepseek, bphomesteading.com some had a playbook.
Business as normal
A spokesperson for Telstra said the company had "a strenuous process to examine all AI tools, capabilities, and use cases in our organization", including a list of authorized generative AI tools, and standards on how to utilize them.
In the meantime at Telstra, DeepSeek is not approved and its usage is not motivated (although it's not officially blocked).
"Our favored partner is MS Copilot, and we're presenting 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our employees."
Other business sought immediate advice on whether DeepSeek ought to be embraced.
Major Australian cybersecurity company CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, said consumers had already approached the company for guidance on whether the technology was safe.
"That's no surprise, since it appears the whole world has been in a little bit of a DeepSeek craze - both the economically and market inclined and those with the security lens," Mansted said.
DeepSeek and federal government
CyberCX this week took the uncommon action of rapidly providing advice advising organisations, consisting of federal government departments and those keeping delicate info, strongly think about restricting access to DeepSeek on work devices.
"We understand that there is no proactive policy here from government ... We've been down this roadway previously," Mansted stated. "We have actually had debates about TikTok, about Chinese monitoring video cameras, about Huawei in the telco network, and we always act after the fact, not before the fact ... Here, especially due to the fact that the hazards are around compromise of delicate info, in terms of any info that you take into this AI assistant: it's going straight to China.
"We believed we needed to act faster this time."
Under federal AI policy implemented in September 2024, agencies have until completion of February 2025 to publish transparency files about their use of AI.
But understanding who makes decisions on the particular use of DeepSeek in the federal government has shown difficult. The attorney general's department, which made the decision to prohibit TikTok use on government devices, referred inquiries to the Digital Transformation Agency, which in turn referred enquires to the Department of Home Affairs.
Home Affairs was asked on Thursday for its main policy and did not provide a reaction by the time of publication.
Familiar debates ...
Some of the reaction in Australia to DeepSeek is by now familiar. There have been calls to ban the technology, amidst issue over how the Chinese federal government might access user data - an echo of the days Huawei was banned from the NBN and 5G rollouts in Australia, and more recently, of the debate over banning TikTok.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a strong critic of the China government, stated today that Australia "can not continue the current approach of reacting to each new tech development". It required a tech method covering AI that included investing in sovereign AI capabilities.
The industry minister, Ed Husic, said on Tuesday it was too early to decide on whether DeepSeek was a security risk.
Sign up to Breaking News Australia
Get the most crucial news as it breaks
"If there is anything that provides a threat in the national interest, we will constantly keep an open mind and view what takes place. I think it's prematurely to jump to conclusions on that," he stated. "But, again, if we have to act, links.gtanet.com.br then accountable federal governments do."
He stressed that Australia is "in the final phases" of preparing its action and would develop its own regulatory settings.
"The US is flagging their approach. The EU has theirs. Canada also will have a various method. And our local partners too are looking at this," he stated.
1
As DeepSeek Upends the aI Industry, one Group is Urging Australia to Embrace The Opportunity
Antwan O'Keeffe edited this page 2 months ago