Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, told CNBC that AI model distillation — training on the outputs of other models — is 'competition,' not 'theft.' His remarks push back against U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has called the practice 'theft.'
U.S. officials have accused Chinese AI companies of using distillation to extract capabilities from U.S. systems. The disagreement has become another flashpoint in U.S.-China AI competition, with U.S. officials considering measures against overseas companies that use distillation.
The CNBC report is the sole source for this article. It does not name specific companies or detail the measures under consideration, and it presents only the two characterizations: Huang's view and Bessent's.