Anthropic has accused Chinese technology giant Alibaba of carrying out what it describes as the largest known attempt to extract its AI capabilities through a “distillation” attack.
CNBC reports that AI giant Anthropic sent a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on June 10, accusing Alibaba of brazenly and illicitly attempting to extract its AI capabilities. The letter, which was addressed to Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican (R-SC), and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was obtained and confirmed by CNBC this week.
According to the letter, Alibaba carried out what Anthropic described as the largest known distillation attack on the company to date. Distillation is an AI training method where a smaller, less capable model is built using outputs from an existing, stronger model. Anthropic stated that operators affiliated with Alibaba and its AI lab conducted 28.8 million exchanges with Anthropic’s models using approximately 25,000 fraudulent accounts between April 22 and June 5.
An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement, “We believe combating the threat of illicit distillation requires coordinated action between government and industry, and we will continue working with Congress and the Administration to maintain American AI leadership.” A representative for Alibaba did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
This is not the first time Anthropic has identified such campaigns. In February, the company announced that it had identified three industrial-scale distillation campaigns from three other Chinese AI labs: DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax. At that time, Anthropic said in a blog post that these campaigns were growing in intensity and sophistication, and the company encouraged collaboration across the AI industry, cloud providers, and policymakers.
Breitbart News reported today that Alibaba is suing the Pentagon to remove its label as a “chinese military company:”
The Department of War maintains a list of companies that perform services for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, known as the “1260H List” after the legislation that created it. Since 2021, the list has been updated and refined to paint a full picture of China’s fusion between “private” firms and its military-intelligence complex.
The Pentagon added several big corporate names to the list on June 8, including Alibaba. The listed companies, and the Chinese government, objected to the designations as unfair and arbitrary.
“The U.S. should stop its wrong practice and create a fair, just and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese companies,” the Chinese embassy in Washington said, as soon as the updated 1260H list was announced.
As America determines the best way to harness the power of AI, conservatives must recognize they are fighting a two-front war. Domestically, ultra-leftists in Silicon Valley race to control artificial intelligence, while outside the U.S., China attempts to do the same thing. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at CNBC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.