Gov. Greg Abbott issued a ban on the use of Chinese-backed artificial intelligence and social media apps on Texas government-issued devices Friday afternoon. The proclamation orders the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Department of Information Resources to add six technologies — DeepSeek,

DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, shot to the top of Apple’s App Store free app chart after releasing a new open-source AI model it says rivals OpenAI's work. Its website was hit by outages amid a spike in interest.

DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up, is sending shock waves through the U.S. tech sector by demonstrating its latest AI assistant, which achieves performance comparable to or even surpassing some of the world's best chatbots.