OpenAI believes DeepSeek used a process called “distillation,” which helps make smaller AI models perform better by learning from larger ones.

OpenAI is investigating whether Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek trained its new chatbot by repeatedly querying the U.S. company’s AI models. A spokesperson said the ChatGPT maker is reviewing indications that DeepSeek extricated large volumes of data from OpenAI’s tools to help develop its technology,

OpenAI said on Wednesday that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's open-source models may have "inappropriately" based its work on the output of OpenAI's models, an OpenAI spokesperson told Axios. Why it matters: China's DeepSeek has taken the AI industry by storm with its R1 reasoning model that competes with OpenAI's o1,