Anthropic says three Chinese firms used ‘distillation’ technique to extract information from its Claude chatbot
US artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on Monday it had uncovered campaigns by three Chinese AI firms to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude chatbot, in what it described as industrial-scale intellectual property theft. OpenAI leveled similar charges last month.
Anthropic said DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax used a technique known as “distillation” – using outputs from a more powerful AI system to rapidly boost the performance of a less capable one.
“These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication,” the company said in a statement. “The window to act is narrow.”
Distillation is a common practice within AI development, often used by companies to create cheaper, smaller versions of their own models.
