However, concerns have emerged regarding DeepSeek's privacy policy, which involves the collection of sensitive data, including IP addresses and emails, stored on servers in China.

Experts advise potential users to weigh the risks associated with privacy and security before fully embracing DeepSeek, despite its growing popularity.

The app's swift growth has not only impacted its user base but also tech stocks, prompting the company to temporarily halt new user registrations due to a large-scale cyberattack.

The emergence of DeepSeek highlights the need for businesses to balance innovation with risk management in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI technology.

DeepSeek R1, a free and open-source AI assistant from China, has surged to become the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store as of February 4, 2025, maintaining this top position for a week.

In just 18 days since its release, DeepSeek was downloaded 16 million times, significantly outpacing ChatGPT, which garnered 9 million downloads in the same timeframe.

DeepSeek claims that training its V3 model costs $5.6 million, which is significantly lower than the expenses incurred by competitors like Google's Gemini.

The app's rapid rise has been attributed to claims that its reasoning capabilities rival those of ChatGPT while being more cost-effective to train.

Critics have raised alarms about DeepSeek's data retention practices, as it reportedly retains user data indefinitely, even after users leave the app.

In light of these privacy concerns, Taiwan has banned the use of DeepSeek by state agencies as of February 3, 2025, citing significant security risks.

User sentiment analysis indicates that 38.8% of over 2,340 tweets about DeepSeek were positive, with many users favoring it over ChatGPT by a ratio exceeding 7-to-1.

Despite its advantages, experts caution that users should exercise caution when downloading AI applications like DeepSeek due to potential risks.