Anthropic Accuses Alibaba of Major AI Model Theft, Urges Export Controls
Anthropic has made serious allegations against Alibaba, claiming that the Chinese tech giant executed the largest known distillation attack on its AI models. In a letter dated June 10 to Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, Anthropic detailed a systematic effort by Alibaba’s AI lab to siphon intelligence from its models, involving approximately 25,000 fraudulent accounts and resulting in 28.8 million exchanges between April 22 and June 5.
Distillation attacks involve training a smaller, less expensive AI model using the outputs of a more powerful one, effectively replicating its capabilities without the associated research and development costs. For Anthropic, this issue transcends intellectual property; it poses a significant national security threat. The company argues that such distillation campaigns directly undermine U.S. restrictions on advanced AI chips. If Chinese firms can extract knowledge from American models, the effectiveness of export controls on the hardware used to train those models diminishes.
This is not the first time Anthropic has raised concerns about distillation attacks. Earlier this year, the company reported similar campaigns by various Chinese AI labs, including DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax, which collectively involved over 16 million exchanges through around 24,000 fake accounts.
Anthropic's letter coincided with a broader context of U.S. government action. A White House memorandum issued in April expressed support for initiatives aimed at detecting and mitigating distillation attacks. Anthropic noted that Alibaba had previously ignored warnings from the Trump Administration regarding such practices.
Following the letter, on June 12, the U.S. Commerce Department released an export control directive that led Anthropic to suspend global access to its advanced AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5. The company is now advocating for coordinated efforts among industry players and cloud providers to combat these illicit distillation activities, emphasizing the need for a united front against such threats to national security.
