Anthropic says Alibaba misused AI distillation
2026-06-25
Suspected use of 25,000 fake accounts
U.S. startup Anthropic said on the 24th that its artificial intelligence (AI) system Claude had been misused by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. In a letter sent to U.S. senators in mid-June, Anthropic accused Alibaba of using a method called 'distillation' to repurpose its technology to improve AI.
According to Anthropic, Alibaba used about 25,000 fake accounts from late April to early June, and exchanges with Claude totaled 28 million. The method of training another AI efficiently by learning from the output data of an existing high-performance AI is called distillation. Anthropic's terms of service ban unauthorized distillation and do not allow Claude access from mainland China or Hong Kong.
Concern over distillation by Chinese players
Anthropic described distillation by Chinese players as organized wrongdoing, saying they were 'free-riding on U.S. investment results without bearing the cost or risk of developing frontier AI'. It urged the U.S. Congress to promote information sharing among U.S. AI companies on anti-abuse measures and to create legislation that would allow sanctions on Chinese companies that have carried out distillation.
The company said, 'We will continue to work with Congress and the U.S. administration to counter the threat of abusive distillation.' Alibaba could not be reached for comment. Alibaba develops AI models under the name Qwen and has drawn support with usage fees that are relatively low for the performance offered.
In February, Anthropic also singled out three Chinese AI startups — DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax Group — accusing them of carrying out unauthorized distillation. Its latest models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, have been designated by the U.S. government as subject to export controls, and the company has suspended their availability. Anthropic has long called for tighter semiconductor restrictions on China, and its argument that China should be slowed in AI development is easily aligned with the Trump administration's hardline stance toward China.
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