China's DeepSeek AI under 'large-scale malicious attacks'

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BEIJING — Chinese AI firm DeepSeek says it is facing "large-scale malicious attacks", which are affecting its services.

Chinese state media is citing cyber security experts who say the attacks are originating from US-based IP addresses, which the BBC is unable to verify.

This comes hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the US National Security Council (NSC) is "looking into" DeepSeek.

The little-known Chinese firm's reportedly cheap yet powerful AI model surprised Silicon Valley, which has splurged billions on AI infrastructure – just last week Trump announced an AI plan worth half a trillion dollars involving top US firms.

"Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek's services, registration may be busy," a banner on the company's website said on Wednesday.

This is the second such attack DeepSeek has reported this week – but Yuyuan Tantian, a social media channel under China's state broadcaster CCTV, claims the firm has faced "several" cyber attacks in recent weeks, which have increased in "intensity".

DeepSeek shot to fame only last week as AI geeks lauded its latest AI model and people began downloading its chatbot on app stores. Its rise caused a slump in US tech stocks, many of which have since recovered some ground.

But America's AI industry was shaken by the apparent breakthrough, especially because of the prevailing view that the US was far ahead in the race. A slew of trade restrictions banning China's access to high-end chips was believed to have cemented this.

Although China has boosted investment in advanced tech to diversify its economy, DeepSeek is not one of the big Chinese firms that have been developing AI models to rival US-made ChatGPT.

Experts say the US still has an advantage – it is home to some of the biggest chip-makers – and that it's unclear yet exactly how DeepSeek built its model and how far it can go.

But the White House has raised national security concerns amid reports that the US navy has banned its staff from using DeepSeek's app.

"I spoke with [the National Security Council] this morning, they are looking into what [natinal security implications] may be," said Ms Leavitt.

Speaking on Fox News, the recently appointed "White House AI and crypto czar", David Sacks, suggested that DeepSeek may have used the models developed by top US firm OpenAI to get better.

This process – which involves one AI model learning from another – is called knowledge distillation.

"There's substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI's models," Sacks said. "I think one of the things you're going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps to try and prevent distillation... That would definitely slow down some of these copycat models."

OpenAI echoed this in a later statement that said Chinese and other companies are "constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies."

"As the leading builder of AI, we engage in countermeasures to protect our [intellectual property]... and believe as we go forward that it is critically important that we are working closely with the U.S. government to best protect the most capable models".

As DeepSeek rattled markets this week, US President Donald Trump described it as "a wake-up call" for the US tech industry, while suggesting that it could ultimately prove to be " a positive" sign.

"If you could do it cheaper, if you could do it [for] less [and] get to the same end result. I think that's a good thing for us," he told reporters on board Air Force One.

He also said he was not concerned about the breakthrough, adding the US will remain a dominant player in the field. — BBC