United Kingdom, Jan. 29 -- U.S. officials are keeping tabs on DeepSeek amid national security fears.

The Chinese artificial intelligence firm - which develops open-source large language models and was launched in May 2023 - has been banned by the American Navy.

This is because it could pose "potential security and ethical concerns associated with the model's origin and usage", CNBC reports.

DeepSeek could have used distillation - a method that sees one AI model learning from another AI model - from OpenAI to make the cheap and powerful AI model rival it.

The U.S. firm has said it is working with the country's government to protect "the most capable models".

According to BBC News, OpenAI said in a statement: "[Companies are] trying to...