U.S. AI company Anthropic accused Alibaba, the Chinese technology and e-commerce giant, of illicitly extracting its Claude AI model capabilities in what ​it said was the largest known attack of its kind on the company, according to a ‌letter seen by Reuters. The strike by Alibaba is described as a “distillation” effort, which Anthropic has said involves training a less capable model on the outputs of a stronger one. Anthropic said the campaign was conducted between April 22 and June 5, 2026, and generated more ​than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts. Anthropic said in the letter that ​distillation is a way to help accelerate China’s ability to reach Anthropic’s advanced Mythos ⁠Preview capabilities.

Full report : Anthropic accuses Chinese rival Alibaba of illicitly extracting AI capabilities.