After its global debut and rapid surge in popularity, China’s DeepSeek AI chatbot has faced critical scrutiny and restrictions from several countries. South Korea, for example, has banned new downloads of the app through both Apple’s App Store and Google Play due to concerns about compliance with personal data protection laws.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has temporarily paused downloads of its chatbot apps in South Korea while it works with local authorities to address privacy concerns, according to

Regulators said they would suspend the app until they could be sure it complied with the country’s data protection laws.