Users are required to comply with all applicable laws when using the model and are prohibited from generating harmful or deceptive content with it.
This analysis describes what DeepSeek's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
This provision places affirmative compliance obligations on the deploying organization rather than on DeepSeek, meaning that legal responsibility for lawful and non-harmful use of the model's outputs rests with the user or deploying entity.
Interpretive note: The terms 'harmful' and 'deceptive' are not defined in the license, and the applicable legal standards vary significantly by jurisdiction and deployment context, creating interpretive uncertainty for deploying organizations.
Severity upgraded from medium to high, indicating increased importance of compliance enforcement.
View full change record →Severity was increased from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement expectations for acceptable use compliance.
View full change record →Severity was increased from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek prioritized enforcement of acceptable use policies.
View full change record →Severity was elevated from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek increased enforcement priority for acceptable use compliance.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement of acceptable use requirements.
View full change record →Severity was upgraded from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek elevated the importance of acceptable use compliance requirements.
View full change record →Severity was elevated from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement of acceptable use policies.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement priority.
View full change record →Severity was increased from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek elevated the importance of acceptable use compliance.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek elevated enforcement priority for acceptable use compliance.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement priority.
View full change record →Severity was elevated from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement priority.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek elevated the importance of acceptable use compliance.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating DeepSeek prioritized compliance enforcement.
View full change record →Severity increased from medium to high, indicating stricter enforcement priority for compliance requirements.
View full change record →Organizations and developers deploying DeepSeek-R1 in products bear the contractual and legal responsibility for ensuring that the model's outputs comply with applicable laws and do not generate harmful or deceptive content; this obligation is not assumed by DeepSeek under the license.
How other platforms handle this
You agree not to use the Services to: (a) violate any applicable law or regulation; (b) infringe the intellectual property rights of others; (c) transmit any material that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable; (d) distribute malware or ...
Customer agrees to comply with Cohere's Acceptable Use Policy, as updated from time to time, which is incorporated into this Agreement by reference. Customer may not use the Services for any unlawful purpose, to generate content that infringes third-party rights, or in any manner that violates appli...
You agree not to engage in any of the following prohibited activities: (i) copying, distributing, or disclosing any part of the Service in any medium, including without limitation by any automated or non-automated 'scraping'; (ii) using any automated system, including without limitation 'robots,' 's...
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"You must comply with applicable laws and regulations in your use of the Model. You will not use the Model to generate content that is harmful, deceptive, or otherwise violates applicable laws.— Excerpt from DeepSeek's DeepSeek Model License
1) REGULATORY LANDSCAPE: This provision interacts with a broad range of regulatory frameworks depending on the deployment context, including the EU AI Act (which imposes obligations on deployers of AI systems, particularly high-risk systems), FTC regulations on deceptive practices, GDPR where model outputs involve personal data, and sector-specific regulations in healthcare, financial services, and education. The provision does not define 'harmful' or 'deceptive,' leaving the compliance burden on the deploying organization to interpret these terms in light of applicable law. 2) GOVERNANCE EXPOSURE: High for organizations deploying the model in consumer-facing or regulated industry contexts. The broad and undefined nature of 'harmful' and 'deceptive' content means that compliance teams must develop their own content governance frameworks for DeepSeek-R1 outputs, without specific guidance from DeepSeek. This is particularly significant under the EU AI Act, which imposes mandatory risk assessments for certain AI applications. 3) JURISDICTION FLAGS: EU deployers face the most immediate regulatory exposure given the EU AI Act's requirements for high-risk AI systems, which include obligations for transparency, human oversight, and risk management that the license itself does not address. U.S. deployers in regulated sectors (financial services under FINRA/SEC guidance, healthcare under HHS/OCR, education under FERPA) must ensure that model outputs comply with sector-specific content and privacy obligations. 4) CONTRACT AND VENDOR IMPLICATIONS: Organizations using DeepSeek-R1 in B2B contexts should ensure that downstream customer contracts include appropriate acceptable use provisions and that the compliance obligations imposed by this license clause are flowed down to customers who further deploy the model's outputs. Indemnification provisions in customer contracts should address the allocation of liability for harmful or unlawful model outputs. 5) COMPLIANCE CONSIDERATIONS: Deploying organizations should implement content filtering, output monitoring, and human review processes appropriate to their use case and the regulatory environment in which they operate. Legal teams should conduct a regulatory mapping exercise to identify all applicable laws and regulations that the 'comply with applicable laws' requirement implicates for their specific deployment context.
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This provision places affirmative compliance obligations on the deploying organization rather than on DeepSeek, meaning that legal responsibility for lawful and non-harmful use of the model's outputs rests with the user or deploying entity.
Organizations and developers deploying DeepSeek-R1 in products bear the contractual and legal responsibility for ensuring that the model's outputs comply with applicable laws and do not generate harmful or deceptive content; this obligation is not assumed by DeepSeek under the license.
ConductAtlas has identified this type of provision across 4 platforms. See the full comparison.
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