As Xi Jinping visits President Trump in Washington, the leaders are expected to discuss claims that China is surreptitiously copying American A.I. technologies, a process known as distillation. The Chinese companies Z.ai and Moonshot are not far behind Anthropic and Open AI.

For nearly two years, companies like Anthropic, Open AI and Google have accused Chinese companies of unfairly copying their artificial intelligence technologies. Many experts say the claims are overblown. "The narrative that all of the capabilities of the Chinese technologies coming from an Anthropic model is not as true as people say it is," said Charles O’Neill, a head of model training at Baseten.

Distillation, first developed in the early 2010s, allows researchers to collect data from an established system to build a new system. Some legal scholars say it could violate the Defend Trade Secrets Act, but U.S. courts have not decided this issue. Critics note that Anthropic and Open AI have engaged in similar behavior, with Anthropic facing lawsuits over illegally using copyrighted data and agreeing to pay $1.5 billion in a landmark settlement.