China says US accusations of AI theft are ‘groundless’
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US President Donald Trump is under pressure to respond to the increasing success of Chinese AI models that many companies prefer to the more powerful but pricier US versions.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- China denies US claims that its AI labs stole American AI capabilities, calling the accusations "groundless" and accusing the US of using this as a pretext for industrial monopoly.
- The US alleges Chinese firms like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI used "industrial-scale knowledge distillation" to copy US models from OpenAI, Google, and others since late 2024.
- China urges cooperation and self-reliance in AI development, while the US faces pressure to respond amid growing success of Chinese AI models preferred by many companies.
AI generated
BEIJING – China said on Sept 9 that US accusations of Chinese labs stealing the capabilities of American artificial intelligence models were “groundless”, as the two countries race for tech supremacy.
The US cyberdefence agency released an advisory on Sept 8 accusing top Chinese AI laboratories, including DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, of systematically stealing the capabilities “through industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns”.
It came ahead of an expected September meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House, where artificial intelligence could be an important topic of discussion.
China hit back on Sept 9, calling the accusations “groundless”.
“The US approach is a typical case of using the crackdown on distillation as a pretext to achieve industrial monopoly,” the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.
The US accusations are a “case of double standards”, it added.
Distillation is where an AI model is trained to mimic the output of a larger, more capable one.
The method is widely used across the industry, but Washington says Chinese firms have deployed it at scale to illicitly copy American systems.
The US advisory also detailed how DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun and Z.AI allegedly used millions of exchanges and requests to steal the capabilities of US models from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI.
Chinese companies that adopt this strategy “see significantly shorter AI development timelines and reduced financial expenditures in training a frontier model”, the advisory said.
These actions, taken “likely with Chinese government awareness”, have occurred since at least late 2024, it said.
AFP contacted the Chinese companies, except for StepFun, which was not immediately reachable. Moonshot AI declined to comment.
Trump is under pressure to respond to the increasing success of Chinese AI models that many companies prefer to the more powerful but pricier US versions from Anthropic or OpenAI.
In July, dozens of start-ups wrote a letter to the Trump administration urging it to think twice about any outright ban or strict curbs on foreign-made AI models, saying that this should be considered only for government use of the technology. That month, Beijing also turned the tables by accusing US AI of using Chinese examples to train their models.
Asked about the accusations at a regular briefing on Sept 9, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the US should “refrain from making unfounded accusations against and smearing China”.
“The development of artificial intelligence in China is the result of achieving high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology,” she said.
“Both China and the United States are major countries in the field of AI. We should strengthen cooperation.” AFP
