AI War Begins? Anthropic Accuses Alibaba of Copying Claude

The global artificial intelligence race has entered another heated chapter after Anthropic alleged that Chinese technology giant Alibaba conducted a coordinated campaign to replicate the capabilities of its Claude AI model. According to the AI company, millions of interactions were generated through thousands of fake accounts in an attempt to study and reproduce Claude’s advanced performance using a technique known as AI distillation. Anthropic claims this process allows developers to train competing models at a fraction of the cost by learning from the responses of more sophisticated systems, raising concerns over intellectual property, cybersecurity, and the future of AI innovation. The company argues that such practices could undermine years of research and billions of dollars invested in developing cutting-edge AI technologies. It has urged US lawmakers to introduce tougher safeguards and stricter penalties against organizations accused of exploiting American AI systems. Anthropic also pointed to broader national security concerns, while Alibaba has strongly rejected the allegations and continues to challenge related US government actions. The dispute highlights the growing technological rivalry between major global powers as competition over artificial intelligence becomes increasingly strategic, commercially valuable, and geopolitically significant.