Anthropic accuses Alibaba of campaign to extract AI capabilities
Antropik CEO Dario Amodei attends a working lunch with G7 leaders, G7 outreach partners and global technology CEOs on innovation and artificial intelligence during the G7 Summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, on June 17, 2026.
Anna Money Maker | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Anthropic sent a letter to the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs accusing the Chinese tech company Alibaba’s CNBC confirmed on Wednesday that it was “brazenly” and “illegally” trying to mine AI capabilities.
On June 10, Sen. Tim Scott, R.S.C. and You. The letter, sent to Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., says Alibaba has launched “the largest known distillation attack on Anthropic to date.”
Distillation is an AI training method in which a smaller, less capable model is created using the outputs from an existing, more powerful model.
According to the letter seen by CNBC, Anthropic said Alibaba-affiliated operators and its AI lab made 28.8 million purchases with its models using nearly 25,000 fake accounts between April 22 and June 5.
“We believe combating the threat of illegal distillation requires coordinated action between government and industry, and we will continue to work with Congress and the Administration to maintain American AI leadership,” an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement.
A representative for Alibaba did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Bloomberg He was the first to report the letter.
The letter comes two months after the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a statement. memorandum It promises to help AI companies detect and coordinate against industrial-scale distillation. Anthropic wrote that Alibaba “ignored the Trump Administration’s warnings” as it continued its distillation attacks.
Anthropic in February announced It said it had identified three “industrial-scale” distillation campaigns from three other AI labs: DeepSeek, Moonshot and MiniMax. The company noted in a blog post at the time that campaigns were increasing in intensity and complexity and encouraging collaboration between the AI industry, cloud providers and policymakers.
But in recent weeks, Anthropic’s work with policymakers has become complicated.
The company said it received an export control directive from the Trump administration earlier this month that instructed the company to: suspend access the latest Claude models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are “by any foreign national, within or outside the United States, including foreign-born Anthropic employees.”
Anthropic said the government cited “national security authorities” but did not express concern.
Senior staff flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with members of the Trump administration over the next few days. The company told CNBC that “both parties worked quickly to resolve this issue” but has not yet said when its models will be back online.
–CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this report
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