OpenAI says Chinese rivals using its work for their AI apps

The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has complained that rivals, including those in China, are using its work to make rapid advances in developing their own artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

The status of OpenAI – and other US firms – as the world leaders in AI has been dramatically undermined this week by the sudden emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese app that can emulate the performance of ChatGPT, apparently at a fraction of the cost.

Bloomberg has reported that Microsoft is investigating whether data belonging to OpenAI – which it is a major investor in – has been used in an unauthorised way.

The BBC has contacted Microsoft and DeepSeek for comment.

OpenAI’s concerns have been echoed by the recently appointed White House “AI and crypto czar”, David Sacks.

Speaking on Fox News, he suggested that DeepSeek may have used the models developed by OpenAI to get better, a process called knowledge distillation.

“There’s substantial evidence that …