US and China clash over model distillation amid copying claims
Technology
The US and China are now clashing over "model distillation," a way to train smaller AI models using the outputs of bigger, more advanced ones.
This method makes AI cheaper and easier to use, but US companies say some Chinese firms are crossing the line by copying features from closed systems like ChatGPT and Claude without permission.
US firms accuse DeepSeek and MiniMax
US firms have called out Chinese companies like DeepSeek and MiniMax for allegedly collecting outputs from top-tier AI models to recreate things like complex reasoning and coding skills.
Even though model distillation is common in the industry (used by projects like Stanford's Alpaca and Microsoft's Orca), the debate is heating up over what's fair use versus intellectual property theft.