China has issued a forceful reply against claims by the United States that top Chinese artificial intelligence companies have engaged in “industrial scale” theft of their US counterparts’ AI models. The response on Wednesday comes after three US federal agencies – the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) – accused Chinese AI companies of exploiting American AI models to benefit their own systems. The joint advisory on Tuesday said Chinese companies like DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI had distilled “billions of tokens” from US models since “at least late 2024”, likely with the Chinese government’s “awareness”. Tokens are the smallest units of text that AI models read, or generate.
On Wednesday, China’s Commerce Ministry dismissed the allegations and accused the US of seeking a “monopoly of the AI industry”. “If the U.S. suppresses Chinese AI companies under the pretext of targeting distillation, China will take resolute countermeasures,” the ministry said in a statement to the Associated Press. Distillation is a method in which lesser AI models are trained on more advanced ones. The ministry said the practice is commonplace in the AI industry, including by US AI companies. But American firms say the volume in which it’s being done by Chinese AI models amounts to stealing. “The sheer scale of these campaigns and their sophistication indicate that distillation is not a supplement to these companies’ AI model development, but the critical core of it,” the US advisory claimed.
The AP reported that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the US to “refrain from making unfounded accusations or smears” against China. “China’s AI development is the result of high-level technological self-reliance and strength,” ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters at a news conference. “We maintain that all parties should strengthen cooperation to promote AI development that is open, inclusive, universally beneficial and oriented toward the common good.” The US advisory comes just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to visit the US, where President Donald Trump will host a summit on a range of topics, including AI. In a rare move, Xi could be accompanied on his US visit by a large number Chinese executives, according to the Reuters news agency. It is not clear which executives would join the delegation, but past meetings between the two countries may indicate AI leaders could be in the mix. Xi brought Alibaba founder Jack Ma during his 2015 visit to the US.
When Trump visited Xi during a trip to Beijing in May, the US president was joined by more than a dozen American executives, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Under Trump, the US government has taken a hardline against efforts to advance Chinese AI models. China is aggressively investing heavily in artificial intelligence and robotics, pouring nearly $300bn into what the government sees as the country’s next economic engine. While speaking in Dallas on Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience that China can “never get ahead” of the US in AI. “The Chinese distill our models and they can never get ahead of us,” Bessent said.
The Chinese companies named in the US advisory did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
