Six Chinese AI firms accused of aggressively copying US frontier models
US urges AI firms to ID, then secretly switch, Chinese users to less-capable models.
The United States has accused six Chinese AI firms of aggressively copying and distilling frontier AI model capabilities from US models, potentially saving billions in development costs, according to a joint statement from the NSA, CISA, and FBI. DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI have been engaging in these attacks since at least late 2024, the agencies alleged.
They claim these Chinese companies had "Chinese government awareness" when extracting these capabilities, which includes variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok. The US asserts that Chinese-based AI companies benefit from significantly shorter AI development timelines and reduced financial expenditures when training frontier models through this method.
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- Six Chinese AI firms accused of aggressively copying US frontier models arstechnica.com
