OpenAI accuses Chinese AI firm DeepSeek of stealing its content through "knowledge distillation," sparking concerns over security, ethics, and national interests.

The American company OpenAI has accused the Chinese startup DeepSeek of using its proprietary AI models. According to reports by the British newspaper "Financial Times" on Wednesday, these models were allegedly used to train the artificial intelligence developed by the Chinese company.

OpenAI claims that Chinese startups are persistently trying to copy the technology of American AI companies. Aligned with that, OpenAI says it and partner Microsoft have been banning accounts suspected of “distilling” its models.

DeepSeek is causing havoc throughout the AI industry. U.S.-based tech companies that have heavily invested in AI saw their stocks take a tumble this week after the China-based startup released a new AI model on par with OpenAI's latest model, yet much cheaper to train — plus, DeepSeek made it free and open source.

Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI are investigating whether data output from OpenAI’s technology was obtained in an unauthorized manner by a group linked to Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek,

Sources at Open AI believe DeepSeek unlawfully distilled data from ChatGPT, Open AI and Microsoft begin investigation.