Delhi HC hears petition raising privacy concerns over DeepSeek AI chatbot
A lawyer filed a public interest petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to ban DeepSeek, a Chinese AI chatbot, citing reported data vulnerabilities and risks to citizen privacy and government data security. The court granted the Centre time to provide instructions on the matter and scheduled the next hearing for February 20, 2025.
What happened
The Delhi High Court heard a public interest litigation petition on February 12, 2025, seeking a direction to block access to DeepSeek, an AI chatbot developed by Chinese entities, in all forms in India.
The petition, filed by lawyer Bhavna Sharma, claimed that within a month of DeepSeek's launch on app stores, various vulnerabilities were discovered in the application, causing a large-scale leak of sensitive personal data online, including chat history, back-end data and log streams.
Reported impact
The petitioner sought to protect the personal data of citizens as well as data in government systems and devices from cyber attacks and data breaches, and to uphold the confidentiality of government data and documents.
Governance controls
The Delhi High Court bench, comprising Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela, observed that artificial intelligence is a 'dangerous tool' in anybody's hands, whether Chinese or American.
The Centre's counsel submitted that the issue requires consideration and urged the court to grant time to get instructions. The court listed the matter for February 20 to enable the Centre's counsel to gather complete instructions.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.