Quick overview

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The US State Department has ordered a global campaign to draw attention to what it claims are widespread attempts by Chinese businesses, including AI startup DeepSeek, to steal intellectual property from US AI labs.

 

“Warn of the risks of utilizing AI models distilled from US proprietary AI models, and lay the groundwork for potential follow-up and outreach by the US government,” according to the cable.

Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger ones to reduce the cost of training a potent new AI tool. China’s increasing independence in the field was highlighted on Friday when DeepSeek, the Chinese startup whose low-cost AI model stunned the world last year, unveiled a sneak peek of a highly anticipated new model tailored for Huawei chip technology

Chinese AI companies Moonshot AI and MiniMax were also mentioned in the cable. Beijing “attaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights,” according to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, which referred to the White House’s similar accusations this week as “baseless allegations.”.

The cable instructs diplomatic personnel to discuss “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models” with their foreign counterparts. It was sent to diplomatic and consular posts worldwide on Friday.

According to the document, “a separate demarche request and message has been sent to Beijing for raising with China.” The unreported cable indicates that the Trump administration is paying attention to worries about the Chinese distillation of US AI models. “Foreign actors can release products that seem to perform comparably on specific benchmarks at a fraction thanks to AI models developed from covert, unauthorized distillation campaigns.”.