Perplexity AI has roped in Jimmy O. Yang, best known for his role as Jian-Yang on HBO’s Silicon Valley, as a somewhat cheeky response to rising security concerns about their DeepSeek integration.
In a TikTok video, Yang humorously declared himself as Perplexity’s “new Chief Security Officer,” ironically stating, “What do I know about security? Nothing. But maybe I’m just a great C-level executive.”
Amid concerns surrounding DeepSeek’s China-based origins, Yang assured followers they could “try DeepSeek on Perplexity safely, thanks to me.”
Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind, has made a quirky statement himself by changing his X profile to mirror Yang’s TV character.
The move follows concerns over using DeepSeek’s AI in Western applications due to geopolitical tensions, even as Srinivas and Perplexity have sought to allay the fears by giving faith that all servers used for the DeepSeek model on their platform would be based in the Western world.
DeepSeek, a Chinese creation, quickly rose to fame through its R1 model, which outperformed OpenAI’s previous offerings, grabbing headlines with its cost-effectiveness and performance.
Despite geopolitical worries, the adoption of this model into platforms like Perplexity and Nvidia’s NIM ecosystem shows a demand driven by its open-source roots and capability.
Stills of Yang’s character from the HBO sitcom ‘Silicon Valley’ have been getting circulated on social media, as a representation of the scrappiness of the Chinese developers behind DeepSeek.
While mainstream is focused on the geopolitical angle, DeepSeek’s open-sourced nature, endorsed by tech leaders like Jack Dorsey, makes it a symbol of the debate between open and proprietary systems in the deep-learning community.