DeepSeek hit by cyberattack, stops new user registrations

Making a splash with its low-cost AI model, China's DeepSeek quickly saw a new wave of users wanting to experience "delicious, nutritious, cheap" products, but also suffered cyber attacks.

DeepSeek login interface - Photo: AFP

In a late announcement on January 27, DeepSeek said it would temporarily restrict new user registrations due to a cyber attack.

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

According to Reuters, this is the company's longest outage in about 90 days and coincides with a period when it has received a lot of attention around the world . DeepSeek later announced that it had resolved issues related to the application programming interface and the inability of users to log in to the website.

Last week, DeepSeek launched a free assistant based on its DeepSeek-V3 model, which it touted as costing a fraction of the cost of existing AI models. Some believe this could be a turning point in the level of investment required for AI.

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

However, in a report last month, DeepSeek researchers said 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 code

Little is known about the company behind DeepSeek other than that it is a small Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023. It is headed by Guangdong-born Liang Wenfeng, co-founder of High-Flyer Fund, which invested in DeepSeek.

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

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

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