In an alert published Tuesday, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said top Chinese AI companies have systematically mined cutting-edge AI models from American companies since 2024, including Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok, to build their own. The practice, known as distillation, is widespread in the AI industry, though it is often against AI companies’ terms of service. American companies and government officials have increasingly alleged in recent months that Chinese models are built by distilling American ones. The U.S. has accused China for years of stealing intellectual property from American companies. Tuesday’s report said the distillation campaign had come “likely with Chinese government awareness,” but it did not claim that China’s intelligence played a role.

Full report : Is China Stealing American AI? Why ‘Distillation’ Has Washington Up in Arms.