An American frontier artificial intelligence lab says it caught associates of a rival Chinese firm trying to copy its homework.

OpenAI said Wednesday it shut down an effort by more than 15,000 users to extract the “hidden reasoning” behind its AI models, tying a core group of people associated with Chinese-based Moonshot AI, the creator of the Kimi chatbot, according to a company report. The company warned that the technique could let rivals build copycat models without the safety protections OpenAI incorporates into its own, which risks national security.

“It is unclear whether all operators we observed during the relevant time period originated from a single actor. However, we attribute a core cluster of the activity to individuals associated with Moonshot AI, the developer of Kimi,” OpenAI said in its report.

The ChatGPT creator said it shut down or limited the fake accounts, made it harder to sign up for new ones and is watching more closely for similar activity, the report stated.

The distillation activity began July 1 and peaked July 24 and 25, when more than 4,000 users sent roughly 16,000 requests, according to the report. OpenAI shut the activity down by July 28. (Read more from “Tech Giant Catches Chinese AI Firm Red-Handed In 15,000 Phony Account Scheme” HERE)