Anthropic Alleges Alibaba Massively Scraped Claude AI; Urges Tougher US Regulations
Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, has accused Chinese technology conglomerate Alibaba of orchestrating the largest known campaign to clone its AI model. In a confidential letter sent to US Senators Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren ahead of a Senate hearing on AI, Anthropic claimed that operators linked to Alibaba and its Qwen AI division created nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to extract over 28.8 million interactions with Claude between April 22 and June 5.
According to the letter, which was reviewed by several news outlets, the alleged activity violated Anthropic's terms of service and was aimed at extracting some of Claude's most advanced capabilities, including agentic reasoning, software engineering, and long-horizon task execution. Anthropic described the operation as a systematic attempt to replicate its proprietary technology through a process known as model distillation, where the outputs of a model are used to train a competing system.
The allegations come amid intensifying competition between the United States and China over advanced artificial intelligence. US policymakers have increasingly raised concerns about the transfer of sensitive AI technologies to Chinese companies, citing national security risks. Anthropic's letter urges lawmakers to introduce stronger protections against unauthorized model distillation and to impose tougher consequences on entities that engage in large-scale scraping of AI services.
Neither Alibaba nor its Qwen division have publicly commented on the specific allegations. However, the company has previously stated its commitment to ethical AI development and compliance with international laws. The incident is the latest in a series of accusations by US AI firms against Chinese rivals, highlighting the growing tensions in the global AI race.
Anthropic's call for tougher US action resonates with broader industry concerns about intellectual property theft and the potential misuse of advanced AI systems. The company has called for clearer rules on data scraping and distillation, arguing that current legal frameworks are insufficient to protect against coordinated attempts to clone AI models.
The Senate hearing, scheduled for later this month, is expected to examine the implications of such activities for US competitiveness and national security. Lawmakers are likely to consider new legislation that would impose penalties on foreign entities found to be systematically extracting data from US-based AI services.
