An official US government website used an AI model from the Chinese company Alibaba to search proposed federal legislation. This comes at a time when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had previously accused its developer of "persistent and bad-faith copying" of technology from the US firm Anthropic.

Immediate Removal of the Tool

The Federal Register website, managed by the US National Archives, had provided a search tool powered by Alibaba's Qwen model on Wednesday, but it was removed the same day following rumors and posts appearing on social media platforms.

FBI Allegations

Last week, the FBI accused Alibaba of copying Anthropic's models to build and develop its own tools, further escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing ahead of a meeting between the leaders of both countries. US officials noted that Chinese companies are engaging in bulk copying of American technology.

Political and Technological Reactions

Representative John Moolenaar, Chairman of the House Select Committee on China, stated that no federal government agency should use Chinese AI models, as doing so leads to greater government dependency on Chinese technology.

Conversely, security experts such as Professor Anupam Chander noted that using the model posed no immediate cyber risk, since the website's content was already public and contained no sensitive government information. For his part, Senator Mark Warner stated that the main concern revolves around whether US data left government security boundaries and was processed on Alibaba's systems.

Source:Reuters