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Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Artificial Intelligence

Asked by Sir John HayesConservativeForeign, Commonwealth and Development OfficeTabled Answered 25 March 2025UIN 38536

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department has banned the use of DeepSeek.

Answered by Catherine West

The Government has a robust set of security policies in place to oversee how information is handled, within our buildings, on our IT, and by our staff. We keep these policies under constant review to ensure they are applicable to new technologies. The AI Playbook for the UK Government outlines that only corporately assured Generative AI tools should be used to process HMG information. Everyone who works in Government has a duty of confidentiality and a responsibility to safeguard any government information or data that they process, access or share, and all government departments are required to meet a range of mandatory security standards.

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