Anthropic says Alibaba illicitly extracted Claude AI model capabilities (opens original article in a new tab)

U.S. AI company Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting capabilities from its Claude AI model through a large-scale distillation campaign, leading to U.S. government restrictions on Anthropic's AI models.

• Anthropic accused Alibaba of illicitly extracting Claude AI model capabilities through a distillation effort between April 22 and June 5, 2026.
• The campaign involved 25,000 fraudulent accounts generating 28.8 million exchanges with Claude, aiming to accelerate China's access to advanced AI capabilities.
• The U.S. Commerce Department restricted access to Anthropic's latest AI models, citing concerns about potential military use in China and other countries.