Chinese AI Firms Use OpenAI Model for Distillation

DeepSeek and Moonshot AI used outputs from OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra model to train their own latest artificial intelligence models. This process, known as distillation, was used to develop Moonshot AI's Kimi K3.1 Pro, released last week, and DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash 1017, which launched on October 17.

OpenAI previously linked a distillation campaign starting in July to individuals associated with Moonshot AI in a September 30 blog post. Leading AI firms, including Google and Anthropic, argue that distillation allows rivals to reproduce advanced capabilities more quickly and cheaply than original development.

In response to these practices, Anthropic recently implemented measures that it claims reduced data harvesting from distillation attacks by 90% to 99%. OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the report from The Information.