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One Australian business has actually discouraged staff from using the technology, others are scrambling for guidance on its cybersecurity implications - while federal government ministers are prompting care.

But others have invited DeepSeek's arrival, requiring Australia to lead in developing effective yet less energy-intensive AI innovation.

In the days because the Chinese business released its R1 expert system design and openly released its chatbot and app, it has upended the AI market.

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Several worldwide industry leaders saw their market price drop after the launch, as DeepSeek revealed AI might be developed using a fraction of the cost and processing needed to train models such as ChatGPT or Meta's Llama.

Its arrival might signify a new market shift, however for federal government and service, the result is uncertain. Whereas ChatGPT's 2022 arrival captured governments and services by surprise as personnel started to experiment with the new AI innovation, a minimum of for the arrival of Deepseek, some had a playbook.

Business as usual

A spokesperson for Telstra said the company had "a rigorous process to examine all AI tools, abilities, and utilize cases in our company", including a list of approved generative AI tools, and standards on how to use them.

In the meantime at Telstra, DeepSeek is not authorized and its usage is not encouraged (although it's not formally obstructed).

"Our preferred partner is MS Copilot, and we're presenting 21,000 Copilot for Microsoft 365 licences to our employees."

Other companies looked for immediate guidance on whether DeepSeek should be adopted.

Major Australian cybersecurity company CyberCX's executive director of cyber intelligence, Katherine Mansted, said clients had actually already approached the business for higgledy-piggledy.xyz advice on whether the innovation was safe.

"That's not a surprise, due to the fact that it seems the entire world has actually remained in a little a DeepSeek frenzy - both the financially and market inclined and those with the security lens," Mansted stated.

DeepSeek and federal government

CyberCX this week took the uncommon step of rapidly providing suggestions suggesting organisations, consisting of federal government departments and those storing sensitive details, highly think about restricting access to DeepSeek on work gadgets.

"We understand that there is no proactive policy here from government ... We've been down this road in the past," Mansted said. "We have actually had arguments about TikTok, about Chinese monitoring cams, about Huawei in the telco network, and we always act after the truth, not before the truth ... Here, particularly since the dangers are around compromise of delicate details, in terms of any details 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 carried out in September 2024, agencies have up until completion of February 2025 to publish transparency files about their usage of AI.

But understanding who makes choices on the particular use of DeepSeek in the federal government has actually proved difficult. The attorney general of the United States's department, which made the choice to prohibit TikTok use on government gadgets, referred questions 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 offer a reaction by the time of publication.

Familiar disputes ...

Some of the reaction in Australia to DeepSeek is by now familiar. There have been calls to ban the innovation, amid concern over how the Chinese government may access user data - an echo of the days Huawei was prohibited from the NBN and 5G rollouts in Australia, and more recently, of the argument over prohibiting 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 called for a tech strategy covering AI that included investing in sovereign AI capabilities.

The market minister, Ed Husic, stated on Tuesday it was prematurely to make a decision on whether DeepSeek was a security threat.

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"If there is anything that presents 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, once again, if we have to act, then accountable governments do."

He worried that Australia is "in the final stages" of preparing its reaction and would develop its own regulatory settings.

"The US is flagging their method. The EU has theirs. Canada similarly will have a different technique. And our local partners as well are looking at this," he said.