US Accuses China's Moonshot AI of IP Theft

Michael Kratsios, the U.S. Tech & Science Advisor, has publicly accused China's Moonshot AI of engaging in "industrial scale" distillation. The allegation states that Moonshot AI utilized proprietary technology from Anthropic's Fable model to create its own Kimi K3 model. This accusation is not isolated; Anthropic had previously identified Moonshot, DeepSeek, and MiniMax in a February report for similar large-scale extraction of its Claude model's capabilities to enhance their respective AI models. The Kimi K3 model's recent performance, achieving near-frontier scores, has significantly influenced discussions around open-source AI models. Kratsios emphasized the U.S.'s commitment to the free and fair development of AI, but firmly stated that "large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable," highlighting a serious concern regarding intellectual property and ethical AI competition.