Did DeepSeek infringe on ChatGPT's intellectual property rights ?

 

The Chinese app DeepSeek recently surpassed ChatGPT, one of the most popular chatbot programs worldwide, to become the most downloaded app on the U.S. App Store.

Shortly after, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, expressed concerns about a potential violation of intellectual property rights. Reports indicate that OpenAI discovered evidence suggesting that DeepSeek, an emerging AI company, may have secretly used data generated by OpenAI’s technologies to enhance its own AI models. If these allegations are true, DeepSeek would have breached OpenAI’s terms of service.

The core issue revolves around a technique known as "distillation," where developers use outputs from larger AI models to improve and train smaller ones. While this technique is widely used in AI development, OpenAI believes that DeepSeek overstepped boundaries by leveraging it to develop a competing model.

David Sacks, the White House's AI and cryptocurrency advisor, mentioned in a recent interview that he found evidence supporting concerns that DeepSeek may have indeed benefited from OpenAI’s models to enhance its own capabilities.

However, OpenAI has not disclosed further details about the evidence it uncovered. The company has emphasized that its terms of service prohibit users from "copying" its services or utilizing its outputs to build competing models. OpenAI and its partner Microsoft began investigating accounts linked to DeepSeek last year after suspicions arose regarding its use of OpenAI’s API for model distillation. Ultimately, these accounts were blocked for violating OpenAI’s terms of service.

DeepSeek has been making headlines this month following the release of its "R1" model, an advanced AI designed to analyze requests and break them down into multiple steps. The "R1" model is built on DeepSeek’s primary AI architecture, known as "V3," which the company claims was developed at a cost of over $5.6 million—a relatively modest figure compared to the massive investments typically made by AI giants such as OpenAI, Meta, and Google.