News Summary

US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has accused three Chinese AI firms—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax—of engaging in industrial-scale intellectual property theft by extracting capabilities from its Claude chatbot. The Chinese companies employed a technique known as ‘distillation’, which involves using the outputs from a more powerful AI system to enhance a less capable one. This approach allowed them to circumvent export controls on US technology and posed potential national security risks. Anthropic’s arch-rival, OpenAI, had previously made similar accusations, indicating ongoing efforts by Chinese companies to leverage capabilities developed by US frontier labs. The situation has prompted calls for coordinated industry and government responses.