The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has complained that rivals, including those in China, are using its work to make rapid advances in developing their own artificial intelligence (AI) tools.<\/p>\n
The status of OpenAI – and other US firms – as the world leaders in AI has been dramatically undermined this week by the sudden emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese app that can emulate the performance of ChatGPT, apparently at a fraction of the cost.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg has reported that Microsoft is investigating whether data belonging to OpenAI – which it is a major investor in – has been used in an unauthorised way.<\/p>\n
The BBC has contacted Microsoft and DeepSeek for comment.<\/p>\n
OpenAI’s concerns have been echoed by the recently appointed White House “AI and crypto czar”, David Sacks.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Fox News, he suggested that DeepSeek may have used the models developed by OpenAI to get better, a process called knowledge distillation.<\/p>\n
“There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI’s models,” Mr Sacks said.<\/p>\n
“I think one of the things you’re going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps to try and prevent distillation… That would definitely slow down some of these copycat models.”<\/p>\n
The US has already taken steps to guard its AI advances, with rules that seek to cut China off from advanced chips and steer investments to the US in the name of national security.<\/p>\n