CISA, NSA and FBI issued a joint advisory warning that AI companies based in China are using large-scale knowledge distillation to extract restricted capabilities and proprietary functionality from leading U.S. AI models. The agencies described these targeted activities as malicious and central to the companies’ development strategies, while acknowledging that distillation also has legitimate research uses.
Original sourceJournal · Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
China-Based Artificial Intelligence Companies Conducting Industrial-Scale Distillation Campaigns Against U.S. AI Companies
<h2><strong>Executive summary</strong></h2> <p>China-based artificial intelligence (AI) companies are conducting systematic extraction of proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. AI companies’ models through industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns that form the core—not merely a supplement—of their AI development strategy. While “distillation” is recognized as a legitimate and useful technique in AI research, China-based AI companies are engaging in aggressive, malicious, and targeted distillation activities at an industrial scale that extract restricted proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. frontier AI models. The National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (hereafter referred to as the authoring agencies) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory to alert or