Anthropic claims Chinese AI rivals used 16M Claude chats to train models
Anthropic has accused three Chinese AI startups of using thousands of fake accounts to extract data from its Claude chatbot to train rival models.
The San Francisco-based company said DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Moonshot created about 24,000 fraudulent accounts and generated more than 16 million conversations with Claude in a practice known as distillation.
Distillation — using the outputs of one AI system to train another — is common in the industry. Anthropic said its terms ban harvesting data from its models and do not allow its technology to be used in China.
The company said DeepSeek logged about 150,000 exchanges with Claude, while Moonshot and MiniMax generated roughly 3.4 million and 13 million interactions, respectively. It said the firms used proxy services and fake accounts to access Claude at scale while evading detection.
Anthropic said it identified the activity with “high confidence” using internet protocol data, metadata, and corroboration from industry partners.
“These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication,” the company wrote in a blog post. “The window to act is narrow, and the threat extends beyond any single company or region.”
OpenAI has made similar claims. In a memo to the House Select Committee on China in Februrary 2026, it accused DeepSeek of using distillation to “free-ride” on US AI advances. The dispute comes as Washington debates tighter export controls on advanced AI chips to China.
Anthropic said distillation at this scale could let foreign actors strip away safety guardrails and embed advanced capabilities in military or surveillance systems.
DeepSeek drew global attention last year with the release of its R1 model, which it said was built at a fraction of the cost of leading US systems. Chinese firms have since rolled out a wave of lower-cost AI models spanning text, image, and video.
Anthropic said it has strengthened its detection systems and is sharing information with other AI labs. “No company can solve this alone,” it said, calling for coordinated action across industry and government.
Representatives for DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Moonshot did not respond to requests for comment.
Sources:
Anthropic
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TechCrunch
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