HomeElon Musk testifies xAI trained Grok using OpenAI models
OpenAI and Anthropic have recently taken a hard stance against third-party efforts to train new AI models by querying their public chatbots and APIs—a practice known as “distillation.”
Most of the conversation has centered on Chinese firms using distillation to create open-weight models that rival U.S. offerings in capability, but at a fraction of the cost. Still, many tech workers have long assumed American labs also use these techniques on one another to stay competitive.
Now we have at least one confirmed case: during testimony in a California federal court on Thursday, Elon Musk was asked whether xAI has used distillation on OpenAI models to train Grok. He called it a common practice among AI companies. When asked if that meant “yes,” he replied, “Partly.”
Musk is currently suing OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman, alleging they violated the original nonprofit mission by shifting to a for-profit structure. The trial began this week, with the tech leader providing testimony.
Musk’s admission is notable because distillation threatens big AI companies by eroding the advantage they’ve built through heavy investment in compute infrastructure. It allows other software makers to create nearly as capable models on the cheap. There’s plenty of irony here, given how frontier labs have bent—and arguably broken—copyright rules while scraping data to train their own models.
It’s no surprise that Musk’s xAI, founded in 2023—years after OpenAI—would try to learn from the then-leader. Distillation may not be explicitly illegal, but it often violates the terms of service that companies set for their products.
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have reportedly launched an initiative through the Frontier Model Forum to share ways to counter distillation attempts from China. These typically involve systematically querying models to reveal their inner workings. To stop this, frontier labs are working to block suspicious mass queries.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on Musk’s admission by press time.
Later in his testimony, Musk was asked about a claim he made last summer that xAI would soon be far ahead of any company except Google. He then ranked the world’s leading AI providers: Anthropic first, followed by OpenAI, Google, and Chinese open-source models. He described xAI as a much smaller company with only a few hundred employees.
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OpenAI and Anthropic have recently taken a hard stance against third-party efforts to train new AI models by querying their public chatbots and APIs—a practice known as “distillation.”
Most of the conversation has centered on Chinese firms using distillation to create open-weight models that rival U.S. offerings in capability, but at a fraction of the cost. Still, many tech workers have long assumed American labs also use these techniques on one another to stay competitive.
Now we have at least one confirmed case: during testimony in a California federal court on Thursday, Elon Musk was asked whether xAI has used distillation on OpenAI models to train Grok. He called it a common practice among AI companies. When asked if that meant “yes,” he replied, “Partly.”
Musk is currently suing OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman, alleging they violated the original nonprofit mission by shifting to a for-profit structure. The trial began this week, with the tech leader providing testimony.
Musk’s admission is notable because distillation threatens big AI companies by eroding the advantage they’ve built through heavy investment in compute infrastructure. It allows other software makers to create nearly as capable models on the cheap. There’s plenty of irony here, given how frontier labs have bent—and arguably broken—copyright rules while scraping data to train their own models.
It’s no surprise that Musk’s xAI, founded in 2023—years after OpenAI—would try to learn from the then-leader. Distillation may not be explicitly illegal, but it often violates the terms of service that companies set for their products.
OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have reportedly launched an initiative through the Frontier Model Forum to share ways to counter distillation attempts from China. These typically involve systematically querying models to reveal their inner workings. To stop this, frontier labs are working to block suspicious mass queries.
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment on Musk’s admission by press time.
Later in his testimony, Musk was asked about a claim he made last summer that xAI would soon be far ahead of any company except Google. He then ranked the world’s leading AI providers: Anthropic first, followed by OpenAI, Google, and Chinese open-source models. He described xAI as a much smaller company with only a few hundred employees.
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