Viral ChatGPT rival DeepSeek hit by massive cyberattack

DeepSeek, a rapidly growing AI assistant, has announced that its services have been hit by a large-scale cyberattack, leading to temporary limitations on new user registrations. Despite this, new registrations are reportedly still being processed on the platform. A notice on DeepSeek’s website informs users of potential disruptions, stating, “Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services, registration may be busy. Please wait and try again. Registered users can log in normally. Thank you for your understanding and support.” The platform’s status page also indicates degraded performance.

The Chinese startup has not provided additional details about the cyberattack, leaving it unclear whether existing users or their data have been impacted. Earlier this week, DeepSeek also experienced outages following its rapid ascent to the top of app store charts on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store.

Launched just a few days ago on Android and iOS, DeepSeek has quickly gained attention for its ability to operate with significantly lower data consumption and costs compared to established competitors like OpenAI and Meta. The startup’s success is being perceived as a challenge to American dominance in AI, potentially reshaping the landscape of AI development and investment.

DeepSeek has also earned praise for its performance, with some reviewers highlighting its human-like reasoning and open-source flexibility. This combination of features positions the chatbot as a credible threat to more established AI models in the market.