China's Ministry of Commerce has threatened "all necessary measures" in response to US allegations that Chinese AI companies distilled American frontier models, denying the claims and counter-alleging that US companies have themselves distilled Chinese models. Beijing also argues its AI firms are already leading in some areas, making distillation of US models unnecessary, while noting the timing of releases leaves little room for the alleged copying to have occurred. Amid the dispute, China is calling for cooperative AI governance through its newly formed World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, and interestingly finds itself aligned with a large portion of the US tech industry in advocating for open-source AI models.
