On Monday, xAI CEO Elon Musk escalated his feud after Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)-backed Anthropic accused Chinese firms like DeepSeek of copying its Claude model.
Anthropic Alleges ‘Industrial-Scale’ AI Distillation
Anthropic said that Chinese AI companies, including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax, orchestrated what it described as “industrial-scale” distillation attacks on its Claude model.
In a blog post, the company alleged the labs created more than 24,000 fraudulent accounts and generated over 16 million interactions with Claude to extract its capabilities.
Distillation — a common AI technique where smaller models are trained on the outputs of stronger ones — is legitimate when used internally, Anthropic said, but can be abused to replicate advanced systems “in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost.”
The company warned that such activity raises national security risks, arguing that distilled models may lack safeguards designed to prevent cybercrime or military misuse.
It also said large-scale distillation strengthens the case for U.S. chip export controls.
Musk Fires Back Over Copyright And Training Data
Musk reacted on X, saying, “Anthropic is guilty of stealing training data at massive scale and has had to pay multi-billion dollar settlements for their theft. This is just a fact.”
Anthropic did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comments.
Last year, Anthropic agreed to a reported $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright dispute involving books used to train its models.
Earlier this month, Musk also criticized Anthropic over alleged bias and misanthropy after the company unveiled a $30 billion funding round that reportedly lifted its valuation to $380 billion.
Pentagon Turns To xAI As Claude Faces Scrutiny: Report
On Monday, an Axios report indicated that Musk’s AI venture xAI has entered into an agreement permitting the U.S. military to deploy its Grok model within classified systems.
Until now, Anthropic’s Claude has been the only AI model approved for use in the military’s most sensitive systems, including intelligence analysis, weapons development and battlefield operations.
However, the Pentagon is reportedly in a dispute with Anthropic over safety safeguards and may be considering an alternative provider.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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