OpenAI Alleges DeepSeek Used Its Models for AI Training

OpenAI says it has uncovered evidence that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek used its proprietary models to train a competing open-source model, potentially violating the company's terms of service.

deepseek ai app
The discovery centers around a technique called "distillation," where developers use outputs from larger AI models to train smaller ones. The practice is common in AI development, but OpenAI claims DeepSeek crossed a line by using it to build a rival model.

"The issue is when you take it out of the platform and are doing it to create your own model for your own purposes," a source close to OpenAI told the Financial Times.

DeepSeek's R1 reasoning model has attracted widespread attention in the tech industry for achieving comparable results to leading US models at a remarkably low cost. The company claims it spent just $5.6 million on development, which is a fraction of what companies like OpenAI and Google typically invest. The app this week reached the number one position on Apple's App Store free charts in multiple countries, including the US.

Asked about OpenAI's allegations in an interview with Fox News, White House AI czar David Sacks didn't mince his words.

"There's substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models, and I don't think OpenAI is very happy about this," he said.

The controversy has already had market implications. Nvidia saw its shares drop 17% on Monday, wiping a one-day record $589 billion off its market value, as investors questioned whether expensive AI hardware investments might be unnecessary if companies can achieve similar results with fewer resources.

According to Bloomberg, OpenAI and Microsoft reportedly investigated and blocked accounts in August for suspected terms of service violations, and they now believe these accounts were associated with DeepSeek. Both companies have declined to provide specific details about their evidence.

Tags: China, OpenAI

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Top Rated Comments

zilchfox Avatar
3 weeks ago
OpenAI: “How dare, we trained our AI models on the internet without permission from anyone first!”

Forgive me for playing the world’s smallest violin.
Score: 168 Votes (Like | Disagree)
madmin Avatar
3 weeks ago
There's never been much honour between thieves
Score: 124 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Dr McKay Avatar
3 weeks ago
After OpenAI trained on all that copyrighted material then gave a half hearted “We’re sorry we got caught, it was totally an error guys!”

Let me grab my smallest violin.
Score: 99 Votes (Like | Disagree)
macduke Avatar
3 weeks ago
Sucks when somebody takes your hard work without your permission and uses it to train an AI model, doesn't it, Sam?

It sucks when the AI comes for you and takes your job, doesn't it, Sam?

The name OpenAI is a joke. There is nothing open about their approach anymore. It was fine to steal when they were open source, and now that they have a great model they close it down so that they can enrich themselves instead of the world. They got the first mover advantage, they followed the Zuck mantra of "move fast and break things" and now they're upset when someone else does it to them. Give me a friggin break you dweeb. At least the DeepSeek project is open source and can be run on your own hardware!
Score: 64 Votes (Like | Disagree)
WarmWinterHat Avatar
3 weeks ago

They'll get away with it. It's China, Jake.
As they should, OpenAI is getting away with ripping off material from anywhere and everywhere they want, with or without the owners permission.
Score: 57 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TylerL Avatar
3 weeks ago
OpenAI is accusing someone of taking their proprietary AI, and turning it into an…open AI.

They’re going to twist themselves into knots explaining why it’s ok for them to scrape everyone’s copyrighted data, but NOT ok for someone to scrape theirs.
Score: 55 Votes (Like | Disagree)