US artificial intelligence company Anthropic has accused Chinese technology giant Alibaba of carrying out the largest known attempt to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude AI models, escalating concerns in Washington over the transfer of advanced American AI technology to China.The campaign was conducted between April 22 and June 5, 2026, and generated more than 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts, Anthropic said in a letter seen by Reuters.Advertisement The company described the operation as a “distillation” effort. Model distillation typically involves using the outputs of a more capable AI system to train or improve a…