Openai warned that Chinese startups are “constantly” using its technology to develop competing products, in the midst of the reports that Deepseek used the Chatppt manufacturer’s models to create a rival chatbot.
OPENAI and its partner Microsoft – who invested $ 13 billion in the IA developer based in San Francisco – studied if the owner technology had been obtained in an unauthorized manner thanks to a technique known as “distillation”.
The launch of the latest Deepseek chatbot sent markets to a turn on Monday after exceeding Apple’s free app store, wiping $ 1 from the market value of American technological actions related to AI. The impact came from its assertion that the model underlying its AI was formed with a fraction of the cost and the material used by rivals such as Openai and Google.
Sam Altman, the director general of Openai, initially declared that he was impressed by Deepseek and that he was “legitimately invigorating to have a new competitor”.
However, Wednesday Openai said he had seen evidence of “distillation” of Chinese companies, referring to a development technique that stimulates the performance of smaller models using larger advanced models to obtain similar results on specific tasks. The OPENAI declaration did not refer directly to Deepseek.
“We know [China]-The companies based – and others – are constantly trying to distill the models of leaders of American AI companies, “said Openai spokesperson. “As the first manufacturer of AI, we are engaging in countermeasures to protect our IP [intellectual property]Including a careful process for border capacities to include in published models. »»
OPENAI, which has itself been accused of using data without authorization or a license of publishers and the creative industry to train its own models, has already prevented unnamed entities from trying to distill its models.
The Openai spokesperson added that it was now “of extremely important importance” that the company worked with the American government to “best protect the most competent models against the efforts of adversaries and competitors To take American technology ”.
On Tuesday, David Sacks, the AI of Donald Trump and the Tsar Crypto, told Fox News that he thought it was “possible” that this intellectual property flight had occurred.
“There is substantial evidence that what Deepseek has done here is that they have distilled the knowledge of Openai models,” he said. “I think that one of the things you will see in the coming months is that our main AI companies take measures to try to prevent distillation. This would certainly slow down some of these copying models. »»
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The US Navy has already prohibited its members from using Deepseek applications due to “potential security and ethical concerns”.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the US National Security Council examined the potential implications that the AI application had posed.
Earlier this week, Trump described the launch of Deepseek “alarm clock” of Silicon Valley in the world race to dominate artificial intelligence.
The Openai and Microsoft survey on a possible distillation was reported for the first time by Bloomberg. Microsoft refused to comment.
