US Treasury Secretary to Investigate Chinese AI Models for IP Theft

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that he is closely examining open-source artificial intelligence models from China and will take action if evidence of intellectual property (IP) theft from U.S. companies is found.

In an interview with Fox Business on the 21st (local time), Bessent emphasized, "We have heard a lot of discussion about open-source models threatening U.S. AI models," adding, "While the government supports open-source models, it does not support intellectual property theft."

He added, "Particularly if foreign models are found to have stolen the fruits of our companies' labor, we have the authority to sanction them."

He stated that Chinese models have sent "hundreds of millions of calls to U.S. models in an attempt to reconstruct the models' code and processing," calling this "unacceptable" and vowing to "thoroughly investigate this issue within days or weeks."

Bessent's remarks align with claims by OpenAI and Anthropic that Chinese competitors have systematically and unauthorizedly stolen the outputs of leading U.S. models to develop a new generation of chatbots at a much lower cost.

Last April, the Trump administration promised to take additional steps, including measures to hold foreign actors accountable for the so-called "hostile distillation" practice.

Bessent noted, "Another issue may be whether (U.S.) companies using Chinese models should be required to disclose that fact to their customers," adding, "(Customers) should not be using counterfeit goods."

Meanwhile, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer stated in an interview with U.S. business broadcaster CNBC on the same day, "We are looking very closely at how China is proliferating AI development and will help U.S. companies compete fairly."
 
(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.