Anthropic Reports Alibaba Qwen Lab Used 25,000 Fake Accounts to Access Claude From April to June

According to Bloomberg, from April to June, Anthropic told US senators and White House officials that operators linked to Alibaba's Qwen AI lab used nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to make 28.8 million queries to Claude. Anthropic stated it does not offer products in China, while Alibaba declined to comment.

The incident involves knowledge distillation, a technique where smaller AI models replicate larger ones' outputs. Anthropic said unauthorized distillation reproduces advanced capabilities while violating service terms.