周二，财政部长斯科特·贝森特表示，美国将审查来自中国的开源模型，以寻找知识产权盗窃的迹象，并威胁称，如果证实存在知识产权盗窃，将对中国的 AI 公司实施制裁。
“我们看到了很多关于开源模型出现并威胁美国大语言模型的讨论，”贝森特周二在福克斯商业频道上表示。“本届政府支持开源模型，但我们不支持的是知识产权盗窃。如果我们发现，尤其是海外模型正在窃取我们伟大公司的成果，我们有能力因这种盗窃行为而制裁它们。”
贝森特的言论最早由彭博社报道。
此番言论发表之际，中国模型——最近的是月之暗面的 Kimi K3——在能力和受欢迎程度上都在不断提升，有可能损害 OpenAI 和 Anthropic 等美国顶级 AI 公司的商业模式，以及它们筹集更多资金以继续开发前沿模型的能力。
周一，Axios 报道称，特朗普政府正在考虑全面禁止中国的开源模型，尽管其他人对这一说法提出了异议。
数月来，AI 公司一直在警告外国行为者复制其 AI 技术并将其重新部署为开源模型的行为。今年 4 月，白宫表示将与 AI 公司密切合作，打击此类盗窃行为。
美国对中国模型的制裁，将增加政府为在 AI 竞赛中保持领先地位而尝试的日益增多的策略清单。在限制中国获取先进芯片并收紧出口管制之后，华盛顿现在发出信号，可能将目标对准 AI 模型本身，此举可能标志着前沿实验室与中国开源替代方案之间的技术竞争显著升级。
模型蒸馏是一种技术，它允许将较大模型的部分能力转移到更小、更易运行的系统中——但并非所有人都同意蒸馏其他公司的模型构成盗窃。
本月早些时候，微软首席执行官萨提亚·纳德拉批评大型实验室正是基于这种假设：“虽然模型提供商在公共数据上拥有合理使用权利来训练模型所带来的巨大创新是必要的，但我发现具有讽刺意味的是，现状却是反过来对知识蒸馏施加限制性条款。”
AI 实验室的训练实践继续给这些公司带来法律风险。Anthropic 本周获得批准，开始向作者支付款项，作为其 15 亿美元和解协议的一部分，此前法官裁定该公司非法下载并存储了数百万本受版权保护的书籍来训练其 AI。
此外，业内一些人认为，知识蒸馏并非中国追赶美国 AI 公司的唯一原因。
“我们知道知识蒸馏在创建优秀模型的能力中只是一个非常小的因素，而且这是每个人都在采用的做法，包括美国的公司，”HuggingFace 首席执行官克莱姆·德朗格在最近一期 TechCrunch 的 Equity 播客中表示。“如果仅仅通过知识蒸馏就能轻松擅长构建 AI 模型，那么许多其他国家，包括美国，就会有更好的开源 AI。现实情况是，他们在中国的确拥有非常非常优秀的研究团队……在 AI 方面采取比美国更加开放和协作的方式。”
On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. would examine open source models from China for signs of intellectual property theft, threatening sanctions against Chinese AI companies if IP theft is established.
“We’ve seen a lot of talk about open source models coming and threatening the large language models in the US,” Bessent said on Fox Business Tuesday. “This administration supports open source models, but what we do not support is IP theft. If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft.”
Bessent’s comments were first reported by Bloomberg.
The statement comes as Chinese models — most recently Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 — are gaining in capabilities and popularity, threatening to harm the business models of top American AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as their abilities to raise more capital to continue developing frontier models.
On Monday, Axios reported that the Trump administration is considering a wholesale ban on Chinese open source models, although others have disputed that claim.
AI companies have been warning for months against campaigns by foreign actors to copy their AI technology and redeploy it as open source. In April, the White House said it would work closely with AI firms to combat the theft.
Sanctions from the U.S. against Chinese models would add to the growing list of strategies the government is attempting to maintain the lead in the AI race. After restricting China’s access to advanced chips and tightening export controls, Washington is now signaling it may target the AI models themselves, a move that could mark a significant escalation in the technological competition between frontier labs and Chinese open-source alternatives.
Model distillation is a technique that allows some of a larger model’s capabilities to be translated into a smaller system that’s easier to run — but not everyone agrees that distilling another company’s model constitutes theft.
Earlier this month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella criticized large labs for making just this assumption: “While the great innovation that comes from model providers having fair use rights to train models on public data is needed, I find it ironic that the status quo is to then turn around and impose restrictive terms on distillation.”
AI labs’ training practices continue to be a source of legal risk for the companies. Anthropic this week got the green light to start cutting authors checks as part of its $1.5 billion settlement after a judge ruled it had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books to train its AI.
Furthermore, some in the industry argue that distillation isn’t the only reason China is catching up to U.S. AI companies.
“We know distillation to be a very small factor in the ability to create good models, and it’s a practice that everyone is doing, including companies in the U.S.,” Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue said on a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. “If it were easy just to do distillation to get good at building AI models, there would be many other countries, including in the U.S., with much better open source AI. The reality is they have really, really good research teams in China…taking a much more open and collaborative approach to AI than in the U.S.”