OpenAI, the creator of the popular ChatGPT AI chatbot, claims to have found evidence suggesting that Chinese AI upstart DeepSeek used OpenAI’s data to train its own competing models.
The Verge reports that OpenAI and Microsoft are investigating whether Chinese AI rival DeepSeek has violated the terms of service by using OpenAI’s API to integrate its AI models into DeepSeek’s own offerings. According to sources from Bloomberg, Microsoft security researchers detected large amounts of data being exfiltrated through OpenAI developer accounts in late 2024, which the company believes are affiliated with DeepSeek.
OpenAI has stated that it found evidence linking DeepSeek to the use of distillation, a technique developers employ to train AI models by extracting data from larger, more capable ones. This method allows for the efficient training of smaller models at a fraction of…
