The Open Source Initiative have defined what they believe constitutes "open source AI" (https://opensource.org/ai/open-source-ai-definition). This includes detailed descriptions of training data, explanation on how it was obtained, selected, labeled, processed and filtered. As long as a company utilize any model trained on non-specified data I will assume it is either stolen or otherwise unlawfully obtained from non-consenting users.
I will be clear that I have not read up on Deepseek yet, but I have a hard time believing their training data is specified according to OSI, since no big model yet has done so. Releasing the model source code means little for AI compared to all its training data.
As i wrote in my comment i have not read up on Deepseek, if this is true it is definetly a step in the right direction.
I am not saying i expect any company of significant scale to follow OSI since, as you say, it is too high risk. I do still believe that if you cannot prove to me that your AI is not abusing artists or creators by using their art, or not using data non-consentually acquired from users of your platform, you are not providing an ethic or moral service. This is my main concern with AI. Big tech keeps showing us, time and time again, that they really dont care about about these topics and this needs to change.
Imo AI today is developing and expanding way too fast for the general consumer to understand it and by extension also the legal and justice systems. We need more laws in place regarding how to handle AI and the data they use and produce. We need more education on what AI actually is doing.