Jensen Huang: AI model distillation is competition, not theft

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated in an interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Monday that training or learning with competitors' products is part of competition, and he refused to label AI model distillation as theft. When asked if distillation is not robbery, Huang said that it is competition. He mentioned that people can test others' products, and NVIDIA's products are sometimes taken apart to the bare bones to understand how they work; he would prefer that others do not learn from NVIDIA products, but competition makes everything better. If one does not want others to use their products, they can identify customers and discontinue services.

U.S. officials have accused Chinese AI companies of using distillation, which involves training models with outputs from other models, extracting capabilities from U.S. systems. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bansen stated in July that this practice is theft and threatened to impose sanctions on overseas companies that utilize distillation to extract capabilities from U.S. models. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment, and U.S. officials are considering measures against overseas companies that use distillation.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused Chinese AI companies of conducting industrial-scale knowledge distillation activities, violating the terms of use for U.S. companies. AI company Anthropic stated earlier this month that it found Alibaba's Qwen series models and DeepSeek engaging in illegal distillation. The Chinese side denied these accusations.