Chinese firms ‘distilling’ US AI models to create rival products, warns OpenAI
Chinese firms ‘distilling’ US AI models to create rival products, warns OpenAI
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ChatGPT maker cites IP protection concerns amid reports DeepSeek used its model to create rival chatbot. OpenAI has warned that Chinese startups are “constantly” using its technology to develop competing products, amid reports that DeepSeek used the ChatGPT maker’s AI models to create a rival chatbot.
![[Screens display the logo of DeepSeek, with the tagline ‘Chat with DeepSeek AI’. The logo depicts a bright blue whale-like sea creature]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bc3daf7b2b781413805125910696bd01b0a4dadf/0_114_8216_4930/master/8216.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
OpenAI and its partner Microsoft – which has invested $13bn in the San Francisco-based AI developer – have been investigating whether proprietary technology had been obtained in an unauthorised manner through a technique known as “distillation”.
The launch of DeepSeek’s latest chatbot sent markets into a spin on Monday after it topped Apple’s free app store, wiping $1trn from the market value of AI-linked US tech stocks. The impact came from its claim that the model underpinning its AI was trained with a fraction of the cost and hardware used by rivals such as OpenAI and Google.
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, initially said that he was impressed with DeepSeek and that it was “legitimately invigorating to have a new competitor”. However, on Wednesday OpenAI said that it had seen some evidence of “distillation” from Chinese companies, referring to a development technique that boosts the performance of smaller models by using larger more advanced ones to achieve similar results on specific tasks. The OpenAI statement did not refer to DeepSeek directly.
“We know [China]-based companies – and others – are constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies,” the OpenAI spokesperson said. “As the leading builder of AI, we engage in countermeasures to protect our IP [intellectual property], including a careful process for which frontier capabilities to include in released models.”.
