Dawn
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15:51 Apr 25, 2026
The US State Department has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it says are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including AI startup DeepSeek, to steal intellectual property from US artificial intelligence labs, according to a diplomatic cable seen by Reuters. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models”. “A separate demarche request and message has been sent to Beijing for raising with China,” the document states. Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones as part of an effort to lower the costs of training a powerful new AI tool. This week, the White House made similar accusations. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that DeepSeek was targeting the ChatGPT maker and the nation’s l...