The Kimi K3 model by Chinese startup Moonshot AI has fueled buzz around the country's tech prowess, as experts say it could rival some of the more advanced offerings from US labs.
A top White House official on Wednesday accused Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI of covertly copying Anthropic's most advanced model to build its Kimi K3.
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a post on X that the United States had "information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model."
Distillation is a technique in which a smaller AI model is trained to mimic the outputs of a larger, more capable one.
The method is widely used across the industry, but U.S. officials say Chinese firms have deployed it at scale to illicitly copy proprietary American systems.
