28.8 mn Claude interactions, 25,000 accounts: Anthropic accuses China’s Alibaba of AI theft

US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has accused Chinese technology giant Alibaba of carrying out a large-scale effort to extract capabilities from its Claude AI model. The allegation appeared in a letter reviewed by Reuters and sent to senior members of the US Senate Banking Committee ahead of a scheduled hearing on artificial intelligence.

Anthropic described the activity as a “distillation” campaign, a process in which a less advanced AI system is trained using outputs from a more powerful model. The company said such activity can reduce the performance gap between competing AI systems by copying behavioural patterns and responses.