OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is targeting the ChatGPT maker and the nation’s leading AI companies to replicate models and use them for its own training, reports Reuters, citing a memo it viewed.
Sam Altman-led OpenAI accused DeepSeek of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The technique, known as distillation, involves having an older, more established and powerful AI model evaluate the quality of the answers coming out of a newer model, effectively transferring the older model’s learnings.
In the memo sent to the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and the Chinese Communist Party on Thursday, OpenAI said, “We have observed accounts associated with DeepSeek employees developing methods to circumvent OpenAI’s access restrictions and access models through obfuscated third-party routers and other ways that mask their source.”