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Microsoft, OpenAI probing if firm's data was stolen to power Deepseek

Voltaire Staff


OpenAI and its biggest partner Microsoft are probing if Chinese actors stole its data to power Deepseek, which has taken the tech world by storm, dwarfing the most sophisticated AI models on almost all benchmarks at a fraction of cost. 


According to a report by Bloomberg, last fall, Microsoft's security researchers observed that persons believed to be connected to DeepSeek were siphoning a  large amount of data using OpenAI's APIs.


These APIs, or applications programming interfaces, are the main revenue source for OpenAI.


Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, putatively built with $5 million, a fraction of the billions that have gone into OpenAI, sent tech stocks in a meltdown last week with the launch of its open source reasoning model R1. 


The Deepseek app overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT on Apple's App Store in the United States.


Earlier, according to Reuters, White House tech czar David Sacks told Fox News that it was "possible" that DeepSeek stole intellectual property from the US. 


Sacks said, "There's substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled the knowledge out of OpenAI's models." 


An OpenAI spokesperson said the firm was "working closely with the US government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take US technology."


The advent of cheap Chinese Deepseek has cast doubts over the efficiency of OpenAI, whose CEO Sam Altman once said: "It would be hopeless to compete with us." 


In a post on X on Tuesday, Altman however conceded the setback.


Altman said, "deepseek's r1 is an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price."


He added, "we will obviously deliver much better models and also it's legit invigorating to have a new competitor! we will pull up some releases."


Image Source: Unsplash

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