MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. China’s DeepSeek chatbot is blocking new users from registering on the platform due to large-scale malicious attacks, according to a notification that appears as users try to register.

"Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek's services, registration may be temporarily suspended," the notification says.

It is suggested that new users try again later. Registered users can log in normally.

On January 20, China’s DeepSeek released a new version of the R1 chatbot, supposed to be an improvement over OpenAI’s flagship ChatGPT. The developers of the Chinese chatbot, however, spent far less to create their product than OpenAI, experts said.

Markets were upended by the release of DeepSeek, which turned out more efficient than its American competitor ChatGPT. The Nasdaq fell by more than 3% during trading, while shares of NVidia, which supplies expensive chips for OpenAI, nosedived by 16.86%.