South Korea's Defense and Trade Ministries have restricted DeepSeek's access to work computers following a request from the country's data watchdog to clarify how user information is managed. The R1 chatbot by DeepSeek, introduced last month, purports to rival the AI capabilities of U.S. leaders at a reduced cost. The Trade Ministry noted that DeepSeek has not addressed the data watchdog's inquiry about data handling practices. Italy has initiated an investigation into DeepSeek's R1 model and barred it from handling data of Italian users.