Global AI experts push back on US ‘distillation’ claims against Moonshot’s Kimi K3 model

Global AI experts are pushing back on US accusations that Chinese startup Moonshot AI distilled its Kimi K3 model from Anthropic's Fable 5, citing a lack of evidence and noting that model outputs are not copyrighted. In posts on X, researchers called the claims 'political' and 'reckless', while Moonshot AI employee Randy Xian highlighted that Kimi K3 launched just 15 days after Fable 5, calling it a 'Guinness World Record' feat. The accusations were escalated by White House adviser Michael Kratsios and US Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg, who described distillation as 'stealing proprietary US technology'.

Global AI experts push back on US ‘distillation’ claims against Moonshot’s Kimi K3 model Researchers point to the lack of evidence for any distillation claims, while some highlight Kimi K3’s technical innovations groundbreaking Kimi K3 https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3361387/another-deepseek-moment-what-chinas-kimi-k3-means-global-ai-industry?module=inline&pgtype=article distilled US models, citing a lack of justification and arguing that the practice does not constitute intellectual property theft. In separate posts on X on Thursday, a number of AI experts called the accusations “political” and “reckless”, pointing out that an AI model’s output was not copyrighted. Anthropic’s https://www.scmp.com/topics/anthropic?module=inline&pgtype=article cutting-edge Fable 5, by pointing out the narrow window between the release of Kimi K3 and Fable 5. “Yes, Fable went public on July 1 and K3 launched on July 15. We trained a brand new frontier model in JUST 15 DAYS. Guinness World Record stuff,” Moonshot AI employee Randy Xian wrote on X. While US officials and AI labs have long attributed Chinese AI’s rapid advancement to distillation, a common industry practice of using the outputs of larger, more capable models to train smaller ones, the White House adviser on Wednesday escalated the accusations by describing the practice as “stealing proprietary US technology”. made the accusation on X on Wednesday. https://www.scmp.com/news/us/diplomacy/article/3361510/trump-tech-official-accuses-chinas-moonshot-ai-stealing-anthropic?module=inline&pgtype=article Then US Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg echoed Kratsios’ remarks, characterising Moonshot AI’s alleged distillation efforts as “a heist of invaluable American Intellectual Property”.