The U.S. government on Tuesday accused Chinese artificial intelligence companies of maliciously copying technology from American AI firms, potentially complicating relations ahead of a planned meeting between leaders of the world's two biggest economies later this month.
The Chinese companies copied U.S. AI labs' intellectual property through a technique known as distillation, according to a statement from U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials. Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones as part of an effort to lower the costs of training a new AI tool.
