DeepSeek AI's Low-Cost Models Suspected to Use OpenAI Data, Sparks Irony Online

The creators of ChatGPT have raised concerns that China's DeepSeek AI models, known for their affordability, may have been developed using data from OpenAI. This week, former President Donald Trump labeled DeepSeek as a "wake-up call" for the U.S. tech sector, especially after Nvidia experienced a staggering $600 billion drop in market value.

The launch of DeepSeek triggered a sharp decline in stocks of companies deeply involved in artificial intelligence. Nvidia, a leader in the GPU market essential for AI operations, saw its shares plummet by 16.86%, marking the largest single-day loss in Wall Street history. Other tech giants like Microsoft, Meta Platforms, and Google's parent company Alphabet experienced declines ranging from 2.1% to 4.2%, while Dell Technologies, a maker of AI servers, dropped by 8.7%.

DeepSeek boasts that its R1 model offers a cost-effective alternative to Western AI solutions like ChatGPT. Built on the open-source DeepSeek-V3, this model allegedly uses significantly less computational power and was reportedly trained for just $6 million. Although some experts question these claims, DeepSeek's emergence has led investors to scrutinize the massive investments U.S. tech companies are making in AI. The model quickly became the top free app in the U.S., fueled by discussions about its effectiveness.

Bloomberg reports that OpenAI and Microsoft are investigating whether DeepSeek utilized OpenAI's API to incorporate OpenAI's AI models into its own. OpenAI noted to Bloomberg, "We know PRC (China) based companies — and others — are constantly trying to distill the models of leading U.S. AI companies." Distillation, a method used to train AI by extracting data from larger models, violates OpenAI's terms of service.

OpenAI emphasized its efforts to safeguard its intellectual property, stating, "As the leading builder of AI, we engage in countermeasures to protect our IP, including a careful process for which frontier capabilities to include in released models, and believe as we go forward that it is critically important that we are working closely with the U.S. government to best protect the most capable models from efforts by adversaries and competitors to take U.S. technology."

David Sacks, Donald Trump's AI czar, told Fox News, "There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models, and I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this. I think one of the things you’re going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps to try to prevent distillation."

Observers have noted the irony in OpenAI's accusations, given that the company itself has been criticized for using copyrighted internet content to develop ChatGPT. Tech PR and writer Ed Zitron tweeted, "I'm so sorry I can't stop laughing. OpenAI, the company built on stealing literally the entire internet, is crying because DeepSeek may have trained on the outputs from ChatGPT. They're crying their eyes out. What a bunch of hypocritical little babies."

In January 2024, OpenAI argued that it was "impossible" to create AI tools like ChatGPT without using copyrighted materials. In a submission to the UK's House of Lords communications and digital select committee, OpenAI stated, "Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression — including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents — it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials." They further explained that limiting training data to public domain works would not meet the needs of modern AI systems.

The use of copyrighted materials in AI training has become a contentious issue as generative AI technologies have surged in popularity. In December 2023, the New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging "unlawful use" of its content. OpenAI countered, claiming that training AI on such materials constitutes "fair use" and dismissed the lawsuit as baseless. This followed a lawsuit in September 2023 by 17 authors, including George R. R. Martin, who accused OpenAI of "systematic theft on a mass scale."

In August of the previous year, District Judge Beryl Howell upheld a U.S. Copyright Office ruling from 2018 that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted, emphasizing the necessity of a "nexus between the human mind and creative expression" for copyright protection.