Alibaba Bans Anthropic AI Tools From July 10 as Distillation Attack Feud Deepens
Updated
Updated · CNBC · Jul 6
Alibaba Bans Anthropic AI Tools From July 10 as Distillation Attack Feud Deepens
3 articles · Updated · CNBC · Jul 6
Summary
July 10 is the start date for Alibaba’s work ban on Anthropic tools, with employees ordered to uninstall Claude Code and other Anthropic products and switch to Alibaba’s Qoder assistant.
Alibaba classified Claude Code as high-risk software, citing back-door security concerns after online posts on Reddit and GitHub described hidden code designed to detect whether users were based in China.
The move follows Anthropic’s June letter to a U.S. Senate committee accusing Alibaba of the largest known distillation attack against Claude and noting its terms already bar Chinese companies and other adversarial nations from using its models.
The dispute comes as Anthropic tightens access controls: the Financial Times reported it is closing loopholes that let Chinese firms reach Claude through third countries, including alleged access routes tied to Ant and reimbursements for ByteDance engineers’ personal subscriptions.