Anthropic accused several China-based labs of illicitly distilling Claude. Here is what the report alleges, what the other side says, and the security lesson.
Key takeaways
- Anthropic's September 2026 threat report alleges several China-based AI labs used Claude to train competing models without authorization, which it calls illicit distillation.
- Anthropic says it detected roughly 200 million Claude exchanges across about five distillation campaigns, naming Alibaba, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and others.
- These are Anthropic's own findings; the named companies did not respond to media requests, and China's government rejected the framing, calling distillation a neutral technique.
- Anthropic also says some labs routed their own users' prompts, including credentials and source code, to Claude through intermediaries without the users' knowledge.
- The lesson that survives the dispute: when you use AI through a reseller, you may not know where your prompt goes, so use official providers and guard your API keys.
📖 Read the full guide on Van Data Team → Anthropic's AI Distillation Report: What It Alleges
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