White House accuses Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic tech for K3
A White House official accused Moonshot AI of distilling Anthropic’s Fable model to build Kimi K3, which launched last week. OSTP Director Michael Kratsios said legitimate model distillation is useful, but large-scale covert distillation to steal U.S. technology is unacceptable. Kimi K3 has heightened U.S. concern that American models are being used to speed up China’s AI progress. Some researchers disputed the claim, noting a very short window between Fable 5’s July 1 return and Kimi K3’s July 16 launch, making the alleged distillation difficult to support technically. OpenAI’s Dean Ball also said Kimi K3’s performance could not be explained by distillation alone. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that covert, industrial-scale distillation by Chinese firms could trigger sanctions or Entity List actions.
