Anthropic Says Alibaba, Moonshot and DeepSeek Used Claude Outputs to Train Models

According to CNBC, Anthropic said it detected and disrupted unauthorized large-scale efforts by China-based AI labs including Alibaba, Moonshot and DeepSeek to train their models using Claude. In a threat intelligence report released Thursday, the U.S. AI company said the firms were involved in what it called illicit distillation, where outputs from a more capable AI model are used to train another model without authorization. Anthropic said operators affiliated with Alibaba used Claude outputs to help train its Qwen models, while Moonshot routed some Kimi user requests to Claude and used some of the resulting exchanges to train its own models. The Alibaba operation was the largest distillation campaign Anthropic said it had measured, with more than 151 million exchanges with Claude between May and July and activity peaking at nearly 3 million exchanges per day from more than 3,500 fraudulent accounts. Anthropic also said Moonshot relayed nearly 300,000 customer requests to Claude in one 10-day period, while DeepSeek used similar tactics and was linked to more than 12 million distillation attacks over 14 days in July 2026.