Anthropic Accuses Chinese AI Firms of Illicitly Extracting Data from Claude Model

US AI company Anthropic has accused three Chinese firms—DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax—of conducting large-scale 'distillation' campaigns by creating over 24,000 fake accounts and generating more than 16 million interactions with its Claude AI model. Anthropic alleges these actions were aimed at illicitly extracting Claude's advanced capabilities to train competing AI systems, bypassing export controls and safety measures. While distillation is a common AI practice, Anthropic warns of its misuse for intellectual property theft and national security risks. Elon Musk and others have criticized Anthropic, alleging it has also used unauthorized training data in the past, highlighting broader ethical debates in AI development.