Anthropic · Alibaba · Claude · Mythos · China · Donald Trump · Ars Technica
Anthropic confirms Alibaba must be punished for largest Claude cloning attack
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Anthropic has accused the Chinese firm Alibaba of launching the largest attack yet attempting to clone Claude, as China races to match the capabilities of Anthropic’s leading model following Mythos’ release and subsequent restriction from foreign markets.
Key facts
- Alibaba’s stock dropped 3 percent after Anthropic’s accusations became public, Yahoo Finance reported
- Alibaba’s models have been downloaded more than 700 million times and are at the frontier of China’s AI industry
- Anthropic’s letter positions the AI firm as intent on helping the US hold the line so that China cannot surpass US capabilities
- Importantly, Anthropic said, the Alibaba campaign occurred after Donald Trump took steps to curb such illicit distillation attacks and defend US national security
Summary
Ars obtained a June 10 letter sent to Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) one day ahead of a Senate committee hearing on “AI and the American Dream.” In the letter, Anthropic shared “new, confidential evidence of the largest campaign to illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities we have ever measured.” According to Anthropic, Alibaba evaded detection by “using obfuscation techniques and proxy networks.” As Chinese demand for reliable obfuscation techniques increases, Anthropic warned there’s already “a growing circumvention economy” to fuel an ever-expanding web of future distillation attacks. Like other Chinese labs attempting to copy US frontier models, Alibaba’s aim, Anthropic alleged, was to extract Claude’s capabilities “without incurring the training and R&D costs required to train” their own frontier model.