Dear Oxford AI Community,
There have been many news reports recently about a new Large Language Model called DeepSeek R1 which is available for free via the DeepSeek website. This is a powerful model that is in many ways competitive with the leading models from companies such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI and for some tasks it is probably the best freely available model.
DeepSeek is only one of many alternatives to ChatGPT that exist and many are likely to offer appealing features or model capabilities. While we encourage everyone to try new models and tools and experiment with the ever-evolving possibilities of Generative AI, we would like to also urge increased caution when using it with any sensitive data. Any information you input to an LLM is potentially available to the company hosting it, including prompts and files you might upload.
It goes without saying that you should not share any University data whatsoever with any platforms that have not received a Third-Party Security Assessment (TPSA) and then only appropriate to the rating. Personal data, including staff and student names, emails or other potentially identifying details, should not be entered into non-approved GenAI tools.
At present, the only AI platforms approved for use with university data are ChatGPT Edu and Microsoft 365 Copilot, both of which have received a TPSA approving them for personal or confidential data. If you would like to access these approved tools, you can request license purchases via dedicated portal.
This is exactly the same as with any other online service. Therefore you should also practice other safety and cyber-security precautions such as not reusing passwords across services.
You should be cautious with the outputs from any tools based on Large Language Models. Do not rely on them for facts or numerical calculations without additional checks. They are best used as companions for conceptual exploration, writing and coding. However, even here they can and do make errors.
Join our online communities if you would like to discuss and learn more. You can also join our series of training sessions to get more hands-on experience with Generative AI.
Best regards,
AI and Machine Learning Competency Centre
University of Oxford
