Anthropic says Alibaba should be punished for the massive Claude cloning

Anthropic criticized Alibaba for rushing “obscenely” to create a copy of Claude, seemingly unconcerned by Trump’s threat to block foreign efforts to copy US models even with US investors.

“Alibaba is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, maintains businesses in the United States, and is accountable to US investors and regulators,” Anthropic’s letter said, “but this happened just weeks after” Trump’s memo warned that the cloning experiment “is unacceptable.”

Ars could not immediately reach Alibaba for comment.

Anthropic wants companies like Alibaba to be punished

Alibaba is already preparing to clash with Trump. In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Alibaba criticized the Trump administration blacklisting the company after falsely linking the company to the Chinese military, Reuters report. Alibaba wants to remove Trump’s name, which it says has “no basis in fact or law.”

“Alibaba is controlled by an independent group, no one has an army,” Alibaba said. “Its products and services are designed to sell business, goods, and corporate information, not equipment, security, or intellectual property.”

Anthropic seems unsatisfied, however, that Alibaba is not working with the Chinese government. In the letter, Anthropic warned that without strong action, this distillation attack “will help China reach the level of Mythos Preview in the near future.”

To keep the US ahead of China, Anthropic recommended that Congress enact legislation with three objectives. First, anti-trust laws should be amended to allow AI companies to share information about how China is changing its strategy to prevent more threats.

Second, the US needs to control chip imports to block China’s access to high-end computing so they can’t outsource US output. This could make waste distillation ineffective, Anthropic said.

Finally, Congress should pass laws to stop the “bad behavior” of Chinese labs so that it is “difficult and expensive” to rely on distillation equipment to improve Chinese varieties. Sanctions could include restricting Chinese companies from sourcing US brands or high-end US chips or relying on data centers outside of China, Anthropic said.