Tag: china

As Chinese open source models explode, the US is considering restrictions

Chinese open source models are reaching frontier capabilities, worrying the US administration. (Picture: generated)
As the newly released breakthrough models Qwen 3.8, Kimi 3 and the upcoming DeepSeek v4 enjoy a moment in the sun, the USA is considering its options.

The Kimi 3 model is already running into compute problems due to popular demand and has decided to halt new subscriptions, as users are turning to cheaper open source models that are on par with the leading American closed source frontiers.

According to Axios, action being considered by the White House includes an executive order holding US companies liable for the risks of running open source models, putting out an advisory against them, or simply adding them to an «Entity List» that requires a license for their use.

Sources in the administration are primarily concerned about increasing capabilities in cybersecurity, but also have fears of backdoors and a general lack of security with open source models, Axios writes.

This comes hot on the heels of OpenAI’s Dean Ball’s tirade against open source on X.com, where he exclaimed his surprise that China would take the risk of a free-for-all in models this capable, as reported by Gizmodo — and called open source models decelerationist, signaling a general opposition to them from the frontier labs.

Read more: Axios, Gizmodo, and TechCrunch. Discussion on r/Singularity.

Alibaba releases Qwen 3.8 preview, claiming it is second only to Fable 5

Alibaba have been accused of massively copying Claude’s responses. (Picture: Alibaba, generated)
The Chinese onslaught continues, just days after the launch of groundbreaking Kimi 3, with Alibaba claiming that their 2.4 trillion parameter open source model matches the American frontier and is only behind Anthropic’s Fable 5.

There is very little information out on the model save for Alibaba’s X post, where they claim the model is «continuously evolving» and is «one of the most powerful model[s] available today.»

There are no benchmarks to back that claim just yet, and the last Alibaba model on Arena.ai’s leaderboard is the Qwen 3.7, hovering around 17th place on coding and 18th on agentic tasks. The new Qwen 3.8 would significantly improve on that performance.

GPT-5.6 was released in late July, while Fable 5 was announced in early June, putting the current window to cutting edge Chinese open models at a little over one month. And we are still waiting on DeepSeek v4, which by early leaks seems to be frontier-level, too.

Qwen 3.8 «preview» is already out and ready to test on Alibaba’s token plan, and they are promising to release the open weights «soon,» writes The Decoder.

Like Moonshot AI, behind the Kimi 3 model, Alibaba was accused of a massive distillation campaign on Anthropic’s Claude, copying some 28.8 million exchanges between April and June this year.

Read more: Alibaba’s X post, The Decorder, Qwen promotion. Discussion on Hacker news and r/Singularity.

New, open Chinese model Kimi K3 is within reach of frontier capabilities

With Kimi 3, Chinese models are rapidly advancing toward the frontier. (Picture: Moonshot AI)
The window between the American frontier models and Chinese open models keeps shrinking, and with today’s launch, Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 is right at the edge.

In their published benchmarks, the model not only beats GPT-5.5 and Opus 4.8 in most tests, but sometimes goes right up to Fable and GPT-5.6 capabilities — at times even beating them outright, as on Arena.ai’s Code Arena.

It also drops eyebrow-raising scores in self-published benchmarks in coding, general agent use, knowledge work and visual tasks, mostly just right below the top tiers.

Continue reading “New, open Chinese model Kimi K3 is within reach of frontier capabilities”

ByteDance, Alibaba ditch emotional chatbots after Chinese regulation

The insanely popular custom chatbots become a thing of the past in China. (Picture: generated)
The popular chatbots Doubao and Qwen are shutting down their personalization features after China enacts the world’s first regulation of «anthropomorphic» AI agents.

They had both offered the ability to create custom agents and chatbots that would establish emotional bonds with users, and act as humanlike companions.

As of July 15, this becomes illegal in China, after the awkwardly specifically named «Interim Measures for the Administration of Artificial Intelligence Anthropomorphic Interaction Services» goes into effect.

This is the first regulation of its kind, and bans bots that «simulate human personality traits, thinking patterns and communication styles to provide sustained emotional interaction,» The South China Morning Post writes.

The personalized service of the two chatbots were used by millions, many of them kids, and often replaced real-life human interaction, as one in seven young adults in China used them to form romantic relationships, Decrypt.io writes.

UNICEF has hailed the new law, calling it a «pioneering policy [that] marks a significant global step towards regulating AI powered emotional interaction services.»

Read more: The South China Morning Post, Decrypt.io, Wikipedia, and UNICEF.

China begins restricting foreign travel for private AI professionals

China is increasingly worried about technology leaks and talent poaching. (Picture: Adobe)
Sources are telling Bloomberg that China has established a list of AI engineers that will now have to ask permission from authorities before traveling abroad.

The move comes after seeing the astronomical wages being offered for valuable AI competence by US labs, such as Meta, Bloomberg writes, but notes that China sees AI labs as a strategic asset and are concerned about data leaks.

The previous policy included restrictions for individuals that were senior researchers in education, nuclear scientists and top executives of government companies, Tom’s Hardware writes.

Before this, AI workers on the list only had to report where they were traveling, but did not have to ask for specific permission.

The new rules might inspire early-stage talent with international ambitions to leave the country before getting added to the list, and dissuade overseas talent from moving home to China, Bloomberg says.

Read more: Bloomberg, Tom’s Hardware, and The Decoder.

Nvidia’s Data Center unit up 75% YoY, Q4 profits beat estimates yet again

Markets have become accustomed to roaring earnings beats from Nvidia. (Picture: Nvidia)
Markets were lackluster on the last quarterly report of $68.13 billion in revenue for the AI chipmaker, as revenue growth seems to be slipping, Reuters reports.

The full year revenue hit $215.9 billion, up 65% year-on-year, with Data Center revenue hitting a record of $62.3 billion — which is responsible for their AI chips.

Nvidia also raised its guidance for Q1 2026, and is certainly not seeing any slowdown:

Continue reading “Nvidia’s Data Center unit up 75% YoY, Q4 profits beat estimates yet again”

Chinese AI labs created 24K accounts and «distilled» 16 million messages from Claude

Chinese attacks risk bypassing the safeguards Anthropic builds into its models. (Picture: Anthropic)
Anthropic claims to have discovered industrial scale extraction of Claude data from DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax.

The massive attacks were used to improve their own models with agentic reasoning, tool use, and coding capabilities, violating Anthropic’s Terms of Service and creating a national security risk, they say.

Distillation works by sending millions of prompts to an AI to incorporate its techniques and capabilities into their own models, drastically reducing training time and costs.

They also circumvent Anthropic’s protections for use in developing bioweapons and malicious cyber activities, Anthropic says. Once these models are open sourced, this becomes available to anyone.

OpenAI said the same just last week, accusing DeepSeek of distillation.

— These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication. The window to act is narrow, and the threat extends beyond any single company or region, Anthropic writes.

Read more: Anthropic’s announcement, writeups on Reuters, TechCrunch, Engadget and The Verge.

ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 video generator goes viral, prompts warnings

Kanye West can now sing perfectly in Mandarin, thanks to ByteDance’s new video model. (Picture: screenshot)
The new video generator, released on Thursday, is already being hyped by state media as bigger than the launch of DeepSeek, Reuters reports.

ByteDance has yet to publish any real numbers, but videos of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West singing in Mandarin have gone viral on Weibo and x.com with millions of views.

Continue reading “ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 video generator goes viral, prompts warnings”

ByteDance is developing in-house AI chips, to be manufactured by Samsung

Nvidia chips are available in China, but users need permission to buy them. (Picture: Adobe)
Not much is known about the AI inference chips, or how they compare to Nvidia’s offerings, but ByteDance is going to be making about 100,000 of them «this year,» and then scale up to 350,000 units, according to Reuters.

ByteDance has been known to work with US chip producer Broadcom, and started seriously hiring chip specialists in 2022.

The new chips are set to be produced with Samsung in a deal that includes memory chips, which definitely sweetens the deal.

Production is advanced enough that Reuters’ sources say engineering samples are due by late March, which is the last stage before production.

A spokesperson for the company does not deny the report outright, but claims the information is «inaccurate,» Reuters writes.

Most US frontier labs are developing their own chips, as is Alibaba and Baidu.

Read the scoop at Reuters.

Demis Hassabis: China is just «months» behind US in AI capabilities

China is great at playing catch-up, but can they innovate? That’s the next challenge, Hassabis, says. (Picture: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
The CEO of Google’s DeepMind has some choice words for China in a recent podcast.

They might be «just a matter of months» begin Western capabilities, he tells CNBC.

— The question is, can they innovate something new beyond the frontier? So I think they’ve shown they can catch up … and be very close to the frontier … But can they actually innovate something new, like a new transformer … that gets beyond the frontier? I don’t think that’s been shown yet, he tells the new podcast The Tech Download.

The key tech to unlock Chinese AI is access to chips, he says, where the USA is far ahead. The US recently okay’ed exports of the powerful H200 chip from Nvidia, but reception in China has been lukewarm from authorities.

— To invent something is about 100 times harder than it is to copy it, says Hassabis on the podcast. — That’s the next frontier really, and I haven’t seen evidence of that yet, but it’s very difficult.

Read the full scoop on CNBC.

Reuters sources: Nvidia H200 not allowed in China

The H200 was getting popular in China, being miles ahead on performance. (Picture: generated)
Several sources are telling Reuters that the H200 chips are not permitted to enter, and authorities have told technology execs explicitly to not purchase the chips.

The H200 was cleared by Commerce for export to China in December and got finally approved this week.

They are much more powerful than anything on the Chinese market, and Nvidia received so many orders, they ran out.

Though the sources from Reuters say officials have not given any reason for this ban, it is likely in order to protect their domestic chip industry.

They do say that chips can be bought «when necessary» or for research and development programs with Chinese universities.

Read the full scoop at Reuters.

Nvidia struggles with huge Chinese orders for the H200, asks TSMC for help

The H200 chip is a huge leap forward for Chinese infrastructure firms, compared to local capacity. (Picture: Generated)
Citing five sources familiar with the matter, Reuters reports a boom in Chinese chip orders from Nvidia, which far outstrips supply.

Nvidia currently sits on some 600K high performance H200 chips, recently cleared for China, but Chinese companies have placed orders for a whopping 2 million of them for 2026.

This has led Nvidia to re-approach TSMC for another production run, Reuters reports.

This is notwithstanding regulatory pressure from the Chinese government, who have not said if they will allow the chips in the country.

They are instead considering bundling H200 purchases with domestically produced chips, Reuters says, in order to boost their internal industry.

Read the scoop at Reuters.

New Chinese AI rules should spread «core socialist values,» identify as AI

China's new rules require AIs to identify as such, and to spread "core socialist values."
It is almost like China has learned from AI adoption in the west. (Picture: generated)
Newly published AI rules in China address both AI psychosis, and forbids spreading of rumors or endangering national security.

They also require that any AI that engages with people should announce at the start that they are talking to an AI, with new warnings every two hours, writes Gizmodo.

Also forbidden are «illegal religious activities,» obscenity, violence or crime, and the list goes on to cover libel and insults, material that damages relationships — or encouraging self harm and suicide.

There aren’t just warnings for using AI chatbots too long, but providers should also assess the user’s emotional state — and take «necessary measures to intervene,» writes Reuters.

Read more: Writeups on Reuters, Gizmodo.

Alibaba partners with Nvidia for «physical AI» training software

Alibaba is massively expanding its AI research and reach, and is recruiting help from Nvidia.
Alibaba won’t say if they’ll use any Nvidia chips, but says they can help out with robotics. (Picture: Adobe)
Nvidia chips are as good as banned in China, but that doesn’t stop the internet giant Alibaba from partnering with the chip supplier — and see its stocks surge 10%.

Alibaba recently decided to «double down» on AI, according to this Reuters report, and promised $53 billion in AI infrastructure investments during the next three years – with even more coming.

Nvidia is slated to help develop physical AI functions like data synthesis, model training, environmental simulation and validation testing, Reuters says.

Continue reading “Alibaba partners with Nvidia for «physical AI» training software”