Microsoft and OpenAI are probing whether a group linked to the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek accessed OpenAI's data using the company's application programming interface without authorization, reports Bloomberg, citing its sources familiar with the matter. A Financial Times source at OpenAI said that the company had evidence of data theft by the group. Meanwhile, U.S. officials suspect DeepSeek trained its model using OpenAI's outputs, a method known as distillation.
Microsoft's security team observed a group believed to have ties to DeepSeek extracting a large volume of data from OpenAI's API. The API allows developers to integrate OpenAI's proprietary models into their applications for a fee and retrieve some data. However, the excessive data retrieval noticed by Microsoft researchers violates OpenAI's terms and conditions and signals an attempt to bypass OpenAI's restrictions.
