US Treasury Chief Accuses Chinese AI Models of 'Industrial-Scale Distillation'

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with Axios on October 3 that Chinese artificial intelligence models are conducting "industrial-scale distillation," which he called a euphemism for stealing US models.

Bessent also said that one of China's stronger models is Kimi, claiming that "Kimi thinks it's Claude" and "Kimi will tell you that it is Claude." Claude is an AI model developed by US company Anthropic.

In response to similar accusations, China's Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said on September 10 that the US allegations of Chinese AI companies engaging in "industrial-scale" distillation of US models lack factual and legal basis. The ministry said the US move politicizes and instrumentalizes distillation, a normal technical and commercial practice in the industry, and reflects double standards, tech hegemony, and attempts to monopolize computing power and suppress competition in AI. China firmly opposes such actions.

Kimi is a large language model product developed by Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI.