OpenAI suspects that China's DeepSeek AI models, known for their low cost, may have been developed using OpenAI's data. This revelation, coupled with DeepSeek's market impact, prompted Donald Trump to call it a wake-up call for the U.S. tech industry. Nvidia, a major player in GPU technology crucial for AI, experienced a significant stock drop following DeepSeek's emergence, impacting other AI-related companies like Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Dell.
DeepSeek's R1 model, built on the open-source DeepSeek-V3, is marketed as a significantly cheaper alternative to Western AI models, reportedly trained for just $6 million. While this claim is disputed, it has raised concerns about the billions invested by American tech companies in AI. DeepSeek's app quickly rose to the top of download charts in the U.S.
Bloomberg reported that OpenAI and Microsoft are investigating whether DeepSeek used OpenAI's API to integrate OpenAI's AI models into its own, a violation of OpenAI's terms of service. OpenAI confirmed its awareness of such attempts and its commitment to protecting its intellectual property, including collaborating with the U.S. government. David Sacks, President Trump's AI czar, also indicated evidence suggesting DeepSeek utilized a data extraction technique known as distillation.
The situation highlights a significant irony: OpenAI, itself accused of using copyrighted material to train ChatGPT, is now accusing DeepSeek of a similar practice. This hypocrisy was noted by various commentators, including Ed Zitron, who pointed out OpenAI's reliance on internet data in creating ChatGPT. OpenAI previously acknowledged the impossibility of creating AI models like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, citing a submission to the UK's House of Lords. This issue has become a major point of contention in the AI industry, as exemplified by lawsuits filed against OpenAI and Microsoft by the New York Times and 17 authors, respectively. Further complicating the matter is a 2018 U.S. Copyright Office ruling stating that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted.
