The US government has accused six Chinese artificial intelligence companies — including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and Alibaba — of using a technique called distillation to illegally replicate models developed by American firms such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Distillation involves training smaller, cheaper AI models on the outputs of larger ones, and US law enforcement and intelligence officials say the practice was carried out "at an industrial scale" and likely with the awareness of the Chinese government. The allegations, which officials say also enhance China's military and cyberattack capabilities, come at a sensitive diplomatic moment, ahead of a planned visit by President Xi Jinping to the United States and a scheduled US-China dialogue on AI safety in mid-September.