DeepSeek suffers cyberattack, suspends new user registrations.

Making waves with its low-cost AI model, China's DeepSeek quickly gained a wave of new users wanting to experience a "good, affordable, and high-quality" product, but also facing the risk of cyberattacks.

DeepSeek's login interface - Photo: AFP

In a late-day announcement on January 27, DeepSeek stated that it would temporarily restrict new user registrations due to a cyberattack.

Earlier that day, the Chinese startup was shut down on its website after its AI assistant became the highest-rated free app on Apple's App Store in the US.

According to Reuters, this was the company's longest outage in about 90 days and coincided with a period when it was receiving significant global attention. DeepSeek later announced that it had resolved issues related to the application programming interface (API) and the inability of users to log in to the website.

Last week, DeepSeek launched a free assistant based on its DeepSeek-V3 model, touted as costing only a fraction of the price of existing AI models from other companies. Some believe this could mark a turning point in the level of investment required for AI.

AI models, from ChatGPT to DeepSeek, require advanced chips to power their training process. Since 2021, the Joe Biden administration has expanded the scope of a ban designed to prevent the export of these chips to China.

However, in a report last month, DeepSeek researchers stated that DeepSeek-V3 used Nvidia's H800 chip to train the AI, at a cost of less than $6 million.

DeekSeek is based on open source.

Little is known about the company behind DeepSeek other than that it is a small startup based in Hangzhou, founded in 2023. Its head is Liang Wenfeng, born in Guangdong and co-founder of High-Flyer, the fund that invested in DeepSeek.

Dozens of large and small Chinese tech companies have released their own AI models, but DeepSeek is the first to be praised by the US tech industry as matching, or even surpassing, the performance of other existing AI models.

DeepSeek claims its AI model is open source, unlike existing AI models which are based on closed source code.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/deepseek-bi-tan-cong-mang-ngung-cho-dang-ky-nguoi-dung-moi-20250128095052645.htm