China’s Alibaba bans Anthropic for employees after attack claims
Alibaba’s will prohibit employees from using anthropicAI tools will be available for business use starting July 10, CNBC confirmed on Monday, citing concerns that the US company has backdoor security risks.
The Chinese e-commerce giant has placed Anthropic’s Claude Code on its high-risk software list, according to sources familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss internal operations.
Alibaba’s move follows Anthropic’s decision in June to send a letter to the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, accusing the Chinese tech giant of trying to “brazenly” and “illegally” mine AI capabilities. Antropik accused Alibaba of carrying out the “largest known distillation attack” to date.
anthropic terms of service It orders that Chinese companies and other “enemy nations” be banned from using their models.
Sources said Alibaba employees had to remove all Anthropic models and representative products and instead use the Chinese company’s own AI assistant Qoder.
Alibaba and Anthropic declined to comment.
The ban comes amid a wave of online backlash against Anthropic in China. reddit And GitHub It outlined the use of secret codes to detect whether users are based in the country.
Finance Times On Friday, it reported that Anthropic was working to close loopholes that allowed Chinese companies to bypass restrictions and access Claude through third countries.
Citing sources, the UK newspaper said Chinese fintech group Ant “provides its employees with corporate Claude accounts accessed via an intranet linked to the company’s Singapore-based entity”.
The FT reported that TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, “does not facilitate access to Claude” but has introduced a refund program that allows engineers to cover personal subscription costs. Engineers can access these subscriptions through virtual private networks.
Ant and ByteDance declined to comment on the Financial Times report.
ByteDance’s refund policy, announced April 2, aims to encourage employees to “experience and learn” from a broader range of AI products to improve their skills, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person requested anonymity to discuss domestic policies.
