China on Wednesday rejected US allegations that its artificial intelligence companies are engaged in “aggressive, malicious” efforts to extract capabilities from advanced American AI models, calling on Washington to stop making what it described as unfounded accusations.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the US to “refrain from making unfounded accusations or smears” against China. It added that both China and the US are major AI powers and should strengthen cooperation.According to the Associated Press, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China’s AI development resulted from “high-level technological self-reliance and strength” and urged all sides to promote AI development that is open, inclusive and beneficial.Mao’s comments came a day after the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint cybersecurity advisory accusing Chinese AI developers of “distilling” capabilities from leading US models since at least late 2024.The advisory named Chinese companies including DeepSeek, Alibaba, Moonshot AI and Z.AI and said their activities were “likely” carried out with Chinese government awareness. US agencies alleged that the companies had sought to extract capabilities from models including Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s Gemini and xAI’s Grok.The latest exchange comes ahead of planned talks later this month between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where AI governance is expected to be among the issues discussed.
What US agencies said about Chinese AI firms
The US agencies alleged that Chinese AI companies routed distillation requests through multiple channels to obtain unauthorised access to American AI models, potentially violating their terms of use.They also accused the companies of using shared premium subscriptions to reduce the cost of large-scale distillation efforts. The advisory described the activity as an industrial-scale effort to extract restricted capabilities from US frontier AI systems.The allegations add to earlier claims by American AI companies and officials that Chinese developers have used distillation to accelerate the development of their own models.US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said China would not overtake the US in AI, arguing that Chinese companies were distilling American models.“The Chinese distill our models, and they can never get ahead of us,” Bessent said at an event at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business in Dallas, Texas.
