Two major American AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, have accused some Chinese AI firms of using their technology without permission to build competing AI systems.
What Anthropic Said
Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, said that three Chinese AI companies - DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax, created thousands of fake accounts to interact with its AI model.
According to Anthropic, these companies asked Claude millions of questions and collected its answers. The goal, the company says, was to use those answers to train and improve their own AI models.
Anthropic says this breaks its rules and terms of service. The company also warned that copying AI systems in this way could remove important safety protections built into the original models.
OpenAI Also Raised Similar Concerns
Before Anthropic made its claims, OpenAI had already raised similar concerns. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, told US lawmakers that some Chinese AI developers were using a technique called “distillation.” This means training a smaller AI model by learning from the answers given by a more powerful one.
OpenAI said this allows rival companies to improve their AI systems quickly without doing all the original research and development work themselves.
Why This Is Important?
These accusations show how intense the global AI competition has become, especially between US and Chinese companies. AI technology is now seen as very important for business, security, and economic growth.
If companies are copying each other’s AI systems without permission, it could lead to legal battles and stricter rules in the future. So far, the Chinese companies named in the reports have not publicly responded to the accusations.