Italy's data protection authority, the Garante, said on Thursday it had ordered DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country after the Chinese artificial intelligence startup failed to address the regulator's concerns over its privacy policy.

Italy has become the first country to ban DeepSeek AI, with authorities citing data privacy and ethical concerns. The move follows an investigation launched into DeepSeek's compliance with European GDPR rules and global concerns about its safety.

Italy has become the first country to block the Chinese AI Model DeepSeek R1 given the lack of information about how the model processes users’ data, according to a report by Reuters. In a tweet confirming the restriction,