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AII-1001-11951
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Chinese firms systematically misuse Anthropic's Claude AI model

Anthropic reported that Chinese AI companies, including DeepSeek, systematically misused its Claude model through approximately 24,000 fake accounts to conduct over 16 million interactions. The firms used a distillation technique to extract Claude's outputs for training competing AI models.

23 February 2026 Β· DeepSeek Β· Intellectual property and appropriation
23 February 2026

Drafted by Raidu Incident Detection, an automated system.

AII-1001-11951View source β†—
Quick facts
Category
Intellectual property and appropriation
Country
United States
Source
sankei.com
Date
23 February 2026
Drafted by
Raidu Incident Detection

What happened

Anthropic announced on February 23, 2026 that Chinese AI development companies had systematically misused its Claude model. The firms, including DeepSeek and two other Chinese AI research laboratories, used approximately 24,000 fake accounts to conduct over 16 million interactions with Claude.

The Chinese companies employed a technique called "distillation," using high-performance AI model outputs to train other models. Anthropic warned that such activities were increasing in intensity and sophistication.

Reported impact

Distillation techniques used by competitors could allow them to rapidly and inexpensively mimic advanced AI capabilities. Anthropic called for prompt action from policymakers and AI industry stakeholders.

Classification

Category
Intellectual property and appropriation
Industry
Government, security and defence
Country
United States
Harm status
Actual harm
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm types
Economic or property
Harmed
Business
Failure modes
Model theft, Unauthorised scraping, Training data misuse
Consequences
None recorded
AI systems
Claude

Sources and evidence

This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.

sankei.com
Chinese firms systematically misuse Anthropic's Claude AI model
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