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Garante blocks DeepSeek in Italy over transfers to China and missing information

Garante took ban action against Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co. Ltd and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co. Ltd over DeepSeek assistant, announced 30 January 2025. No financial penalty was imposed. Status: confirmed.

The record

Key facts

Record ID
AIT-2025-0001
Status
Confirmed
Action type
Ban
Regime
GDPR
Authority
Garante per la protezione dei dati personali
Jurisdiction
Italy
Target
Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co. Ltd and Beijing DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Co. Ltd, headquartered in China
Sector
Generative AI
AI system
DeepSeek assistant
Date announced
Date of decision
Amount
No financial penalty
Appeal
None recorded. No annulment recorded.
Last verified

In full

What happened, and why it matters

Two days after asking the companies behind DeepSeek what data they collected, where it was stored and on what basis, the Italian authority received an answer it described as wholly inadequate and imposed an urgent, definitive limitation on the processing of data about users in Italy. The app came out of the Italian app stores the same week. The grounds were transfer and transparency rather than model behaviour: no adequate guarantee for the transfer of personal data to the People's Republic of China under Chapter V of the GDPR, and no proper information to users about what was being collected. The companies had also argued that they were not established in the Union and that European law did not reach them, an argument the authority rejected on the same territorial scope reasoning that had already been used against Clearview. This record is the fastest action in the tracker, decided within days of the service's rise, and it is the template for how European regulators are likely to handle a fast growing model service from outside the Union. Under the AI Act the same speed exists for market surveillance authorities, which can restrict, withdraw or recall a system from the Union market without waiting for a full infringement decision.

At a glance

The four things to take away

  • Urgent definitive limitation on processing, adopted 30 January 2025.
  • Grounds: no adequate guarantees for transfers to China, and inadequate information to users.
  • Imposed two days after the authority's request for information.
  • The app was withdrawn from Italian app stores in the same week.

Orders

What the authority required

  • definitive limitation on processing the personal data of users located in Italy

The law

Provisions this action rests on

Read the official text of Article 50 in the EU AI Act Explorer, consolidated with the Digital Omnibus applied.

How it moved

Timeline

  1. Garante sends a request for information to the two DeepSeek companies

  2. Garante adopts the urgent limitation, provvedimento doc. web 10098477

  3. Garante opens a formal investigation into the same processing

Verification

Sources

Primary sources are the authority's own decision or press release, the Official Journal, or a court judgment. A record with no source is not published.

  1. Garante, provvedimento del 30 gennaio 2025 (doc. web 10098477)Primary · 30 January 2025

Next

Related enforcement actions

Cite this record

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The record ID AIT-2025-0001 is permanent and is never reused.

In a sentence
According to the GAGE EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker (as of 20 August 2026), garante blocks deepseek in italy over transfers to china and missing information.
APA
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). Garante blocks DeepSeek in Italy over transfers to China and missing information. EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Retrieved 20 August 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2025-0001-garante-deepseek-processing-limitation
MLA
"Garante blocks DeepSeek in Italy over transfers to China and missing information." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker, GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education), 20 August 2026, https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2025-0001-garante-deepseek-processing-limitation.
Chicago
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "Garante blocks DeepSeek in Italy over transfers to China and missing information." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Last modified 20 August 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2025-0001-garante-deepseek-processing-limitation.
Permalink
https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2025-0001-garante-deepseek-processing-limitation

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