TheĀ WhiteĀ HouseĀ on Thursday accusedĀ ChinaĀ of stealing U.S. artificial intelligence labsā intellectual property on anĀ industrialĀ scaleĀ in a memo that threatens to strain relations ahead of a summit between U.S. and Chinese leaders next month.
āThe US government has information indicating that foreign entities, principally based inĀ China, are engaged in deliberate,Ā industrial-scaleĀ campaigns to distil US frontierĀ AIĀ systems,ā Michael Kratsios, director of theĀ WhiteĀ HouseĀ Office of Science andĀ TechnologyĀ Policy, wrote in a memo shared on social media on Thursday and first reported by the Financial Times.
āLeveraging tens of thousands of proxy accounts to evade detection and using jailbreaking techniques to expose proprietary information, these coordinated campaigns systematically extract capabilities from AmericanĀ AIĀ models, exploiting American expertise and innovation,ā he added.
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The Chinese Embassy in Washington said it opposes āthe baseless allegations,ā adding that Beijing āattaches great importance to the protection of intellectual property rights.ā
The memo, released just weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump isĀ set to visit Chinese President Xi JinpingĀ in Beijing, promises to raise tensions in a long-running tech war between the rival superpowers, which had been lowered by a detente brokered last October.
It also raises questions about whether Washington will allow NvidiaāsĀ NVDA.OĀ powerfulĀ AIĀ chips to be shipped toĀ China. The Trump administrationĀ gave a green light to the salesĀ in January, with conditions. On Wednesday, however, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated thatĀ no shipments had yet been made.
Distillation is the process of training smallerĀ AIĀ models using the output of larger ones as part of an effort to lower the costs of training a powerful newĀ AIĀ tool.
The memo, addressed to government agencies, says the administration will share information with AmericanĀ AIĀ companies about the distillation efforts, and āexplore a range of measures to hold foreign actors accountableā for the campaigns.
