Amid rising tensions in the global AI race, United States is stepping up efforts to address concerns around the use of its artificial intelligence technology by foreign entities.
According to a report, the US State Department has instructed its diplomats worldwide to highlight risks linked to Chinese AI firms allegedly using American-developed models. The directive, issued through a diplomatic cable dated April 24, urges officials to engage with foreign governments on what it describes as attempts to extract and replicate US AI capabilities.
The communication specifically names companies such as DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax. It also mentions that a separate message has been sent to Beijing to formally raise the issue with Chinese authorities. “A separate demarche request and message has been sent to Beijing for raising with China,” the document states.
The cable focuses on concerns around a process known as distillation, where smaller AI models are trained using outputs from larger systems to reduce development costs. The US government warned that such practices could lead to the creation of AI tools that appear competitive but may lack the full capabilities and safeguards of the original models.
The document stated that its aim is to “warn of the risks of utilizing AI models distilled from U.S. proprietary AI models, and lay the groundwork for potential follow-up and outreach by the U.S. government.” It further noted that such models may “deliberately strip security protocols from the resulting models and undo mechanisms that ensure those AI models are ideologically neutral and truth-seeking.”
The move follows similar concerns raised by the White House last week, where US officials accused Chinese firms of attempting to access and replicate American AI technology.
China has rejected these allegations. Responding to the claims, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said: “The allegations that Chinese entities are stealing American AI intellectual property are groundless and are deliberate attacks on China’s development and progress in the AI industry.”
DeepSeek has also maintained that its AI models are developed using publicly available data and web-based sources.
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