Using an AI chatbot to ‘help’ with college assignments or augment your resume may be seen as unfair or unethical, but it certainly isn’t a crime. But that could change if a bill submitted to the US Senate is passed into law.
The bill, which seeks to “prohibit United States persons from advancing artificial intelligence capabilities within the People’s Republic of China,” appears to be a direct response to the meteoric rise of DeepSeek – the Chinese-owned AI chatbot that has posed a serious challenge to US-based competitors.
In addition to jail time for civilians, the bill proposes penalties of up to $100 million for corporations that facilitate research into or development of artificial intelligence on behalf of Chinese people or companies.
A Conscious Decoupling
Senate Bill 321 was read on January 29th and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, having been introduced to the assembly by Josh Hawley, a Republican Party senator for Missouri.
Suggesting a statute title of ‘Decoupling America’s Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act 2025,’ the bill proposes widespread controls over the use in the States of AI technology produced in China, and vice versa.
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The bill specifies a series of unlawful acts that would be covered by the law. It includes an offense for any US person that intentionally conducts, attempts to conduct, or aids the “development of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence” within China or on behalf of the country or any of its corporations or institutions.
Depending on how broadly that’s interpreted, it wouldn’t be preposterous to suggest that merely writing a basic prompt into DeepSeek could run afoul, as it could easily be argued that it would contribute to the Chinese-owned chatbot’s generative modelling.
Crime and Punishment
While the unlawful acts are disconcertingly open-ended, the criminal and civil penalties proposed by Senator Hawley’s bill are eye-catchingly specific.
In addition to a $1 million dollar fine, individuals could face the same amount of jail time as set out by the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 – for those without an encyclopedic knowledge of the US statute books, that means incarceration for up to 20 years.
For companies found to be in breach, the fiscal penalty is even more severe, with fines of up to $100 million together with the forfeiture of any Federal licenses or contracts.
DeepSeek Success Story
While it’s probably unlikely that the bill will be passed in its current form or that it would practically be extended to the average internet user searching for buffalo wing recipes, it’s yet another sign that the powers that be have been seriously spooked by the rise of DeepSeek.
Despite safety concerns and the accuracy of its responses being called into question, DeepSeek surged to the top spot on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store after the company released its R1 and V3 models. Its popularity has been fueled by favorable comparisons to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the fact it takes less resources to use and, of course, its free-to-use price point.
After the DeepSeek news wiped billions of dollars from the value of US-based companies, president Donald Trump called DeepSeek’s success a “wake-up call” for Western companies.
