OpenAI
‘reviewing’ allegations that its AI models were used to make DeepSeek
ChatGPT
creator warns Chinese startups are ‘constantly’ using its technology to develop
competing products
Mark Sweney
and Dan Milmo
Wed 29 Jan
2025 18.41 CET
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/29/openai-chatgpt-deepseek-china-us-ai-models
OpenAI has
warned that Chinese startups are “constantly” using its technology to develop
competing products and said it is “reviewing” allegations that DeepSeek used
the ChatGPT maker’s AI models to create a rival chatbot.
OpenAI and
its partner Microsoft – which has invested $13bn in the San Francisco-based AI
developer – have been investigating whether proprietary technology had been
obtained in an unauthorised manner through a technique known as “distillation”.
The launch
of DeepSeek’s latest chatbot sent markets into a spin on Monday after it topped
Apple’s free app store, wiping $1trn from the market value of AI-linked US tech
stocks. The impact came from its claim that the model underpinning its AI was
trained with a fraction of the cost and hardware used by rivals such as OpenAI
and Google.
Sam Altman,
the chief executive of OpenAI, initially said that he was impressed with
DeepSeek and that it was “legitimately invigorating to have a new competitor”.
However, on
Wednesday OpenAI said that it had seen some evidence of “distillation” from
Chinese companies, referring to a development technique that boosts the
performance of smaller models by using larger, more advanced ones to achieve
similar results on specific tasks.
A
spokesperson for OpenAI said: “We know that groups in [China] are actively
working to use methods, including what’s known as distillation, to try to
replicate advanced US AI models.
“We are
aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately
distilled our models, and will share information as we know more. We take
aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will
continue working closely with the US government to protect the most capable
models being built here.”
OpenAI,
which has itself been accused of using data without permission or a licence
from publishers and the creative industry to train its own models, has already
blocked unnamed entities from attempting to distill its models.
The launch
of DeepSeek was a ‘wake-up call’ for Silicon Valley, Donald Trump said earlier
this week. Photograph: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images
On Tuesday,
David Sacks, Donald Trump’s AI and crypto tsar, told Fox News that he thought
it was “possible” that intellectual property theft had occurred.
“There’s
substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the
knowledge out of OpenAI’s models,” he said. “I think one of the things you’re
going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps
to try and prevent distillation. That would definitely slow down some of these
copycat models.”
The US navy
has reportedly already banned its members from using DeepSeek’s apps due to
“potential security and ethical concerns”.
The White
House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the US national security council
was looking into the potential implications the AI app posed.
Earlier this
week, Trump called the launch of DeepSeek a “wake-up call” for Silicon Valley
in the global race to dominate artificial intelligence.
The
investigation by OpenAI and Microsoft into possible distillation was first
reported by Bloomberg. Microsoft declined to comment.
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