Axios: Trump administration weighs restrictions while businesses move to lower-cost Chinese AI.
Such a move would hand OpenAI and Anthropic near-total control of the market.
American companies are turning more and more to Chinese open-weight models because they work and they're cheap on the API side.
These open-weight models can be run on private infrastructure, allowing businesses to change models and monitor private business data.
US Security officials are concerned that foreign code, bad training decisions or covert behaviors could threaten users and vital systems.
US Commerce had talked about putting Chinese AI labs on its Entity List, which would make it harder for Americans to get to them without a license.
Officials also talked about rules on liability requirements and public pressure against US businesses using the system.
But those plans were killed by officials who cared about innovation, because they believed that imposing limits on them would harm competition and slow AI development in the United States.
Since then, many vocal critics of the release have left and the stronger Chinese releases have increased national security concerns.