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US Accuses DeepSeek, Alibaba of Industrial-Scale AI Data Theft

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US Accuses DeepSeek, Alibaba of Industrial-Scale AI Data Theft

The U.S. government accused Chinese artificial intelligence firms, including DeepSeek, Alibaba (HKG: 9988), and Moonshot AI, of systematically extracting proprietary models from US counterparts through "industrial-scale distillation campaigns."

According to a joint advisory released Tuesday by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, major Chinese developers have used distillation to "shortcut" development costs and timelines.

The Chinese tech firms did not immediately respond to' requests for comment.

The advisory also targets MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI.

The US government departments alleged that these companies have extracted "billions of tokens" from US frontier models including variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini and Grok since at least 2024.

"We strongly urge AI companies to take immediate steps to safeguard their platforms against knowledge distillation campaigns that threaten to close the gap in advancements made by American companies," CISA Acting Director Nick Andersen said.

The announcement arrives as Washington and Beijing prepare to address artificial intelligence safety and governance frameworks in upcoming high-level talks later this month.

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