America Begins to Panic, Accusing China of Plagiarism

The competition in artificial intelligence development is intensifying. OpenAI has accused Chinese developer Moonshot AI, the creator of Kimi, of attempting to copy the workings of its artificial intelligence models without permission. These allegations emerge shortly after another competitor, Anthropic, levelled similar accusations against companies from the same nation, according to a report by CNBC International on Thursday (1/10/2026).

According to OpenAI, these imitation attempts have been detected since early July 2026. At its peak, within a two-day period, there were 16,000 suspicious requests sent by more as than 4,000 users. Overall, the trail of activity was identified to involve more than 15,000 users.

OpenAI emphasised that its security systems, databases, and user conversations were not breached. Instead, a more subtle method was used, where actors manipulated the questions asked so that the system would reveal its underlying logic. These answers can then be studied and transferred to other systems.

This method is known as adversarial distillation, where the outputs of one system are used to train another system as if it were its own. If successful, the copying party can acquire advanced capabilities without having to incur the same massive research and development costs.

OpenAI stated that this is not only commercially damaging but also poses a risk to broader technological security and order.

The company, led by Sam Altman, alleges that the primary group conducting this activity is connected to parties affiliated with Moonshot AI. OpenAI has reported its findings to other AI developers and government agencies. As of now, Moonshot AI has not responded to the allegations.

This incident occurs shortly after Anthropic, the creator of Claude, accused several Chinese developers, including Moonshot AI and Alibaba, of secretly using its systems to train their own products.

This series of allegations demonstrates the intense competition between nations and companies to master artificial intelligence technology. Each party is striving to advance as quickly as possible, making the boundary between inspiration and imitation increasingly difficult to distinguish.