OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has raised concerns that rival companies, including those in China, are leveraging its research to accelerate the development of their own artificial intelligence tools.
The issue has gained attention following the sudden emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI app that reportedly matches ChatGPT’s performance at a fraction of the cost.
Bloomberg has reported that Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, is investigating whether OpenAI’s data has been used without authorization. The BBC has reached out to Microsoft and DeepSeek for comment but has not yet received a response.
David Sacks, the recently appointed White House AI and crypto advisor, echoed OpenAI’s concerns. Speaking on Fox News, he suggested that DeepSeek may have used OpenAI’s models through a process known as knowledge distillation, which extracts insights from an existing AI model to train a new one. “There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s models,” Sacks said. He added that leading AI companies are likely to take new measures in the coming months to prevent distillation, which he believes would slow the rise of copycat models.
In a statement, OpenAI said that Chinese and other companies are “constantly trying to distill the models of leading US AI companies.” The company emphasized the need for stronger collaboration with the US government to protect advanced AI models from unauthorized use.
However, accusations of intellectual property violations in the tech industry are not new and have frequently been directed at major US AI firms as well. As competition in AI development intensifies, concerns over data security and intellectual property rights are likely to remain at the forefront of global discussions.
