MiniMax Group IncAccused by Anthropic of large-scale distillation of its Claude model, drawing US scrutiny.

Distillation, a technique that enables the downsizing and streamlining of AI models, has become a new flashpoint in the US–China battle for AI supremacy. Distillation uses the output of a large teacher model to train a smaller student model, and has long been regarded as a standard research method. But it is now drawing scrutiny over whether it can transfer AI capabilities without the consent of the developing company. The US government and leading American AI firms accuse Chinese competitors of using distillation to extract capabilities from US-made models. Anthropic claims that DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax carried out large-scale efforts to acquire capabilities from its Claude model. OpenAI has also stated that it detected attempts by Chinese-linked actors to use its models for distillation purposes. However, there have been no reported instances of Chinese companies accusing US firms of distilling their closed-source models.
MiniMax Group IncAccused by Anthropic of large-scale distillation of its Claude model, drawing US scrutiny.
OpenAI detects Chinese actors using its models for distillation, a competitive threat.