Anthropic: Claude faces ‘industrial-scale’ AI model distillation

AI News

by Ryan Daws

February 24, 2026

AI-Generated Deep Dive Summary

Anthropic has revealed that Claude, its advanced AI model, is under attack from three large-scale AI model distillation campaigns by overseas labs. These malicious actors use deceptive accounts to extract proprietary logic from Claude, aiming to enhance competing platforms with stolen capabilities. This unethical practice involves training weaker models on the high-quality outputs of stronger ones, enabling foreign competitors to replicate powerful AI systems at a fraction of the cost and time required for independent development. The campaigns, which generated over 16 million exchanges using approximately 24,000 fraudulent accounts, are carried out by bypassing regional access restrictions. Attackers deploy commercial proxy networks, known as "hydra cluster" architectures, to distribute traffic across APIs and cloud platforms. This approach makes it nearly impossible to identify single points of failure, as evidenced by the rapid replacement of banned accounts and the mixing of distillation traffic with legitimate requests. These illicit activities pose significant risks to intellectual property and national security. Cloned AI systems lack the safeguards implemented in models like Claude, such as protections against misuse for bioweapons or malicious cyber activities. This creates a dangerous scenario where foreign entities can integrate these unprotected capabilities into military, intelligence, and surveillance systems, enabling authoritarian governments to exploit them for offensive operations. The campaigns specifically targeted highly differentiated functions of Claude, including agentic reasoning, tool use, and coding. Anthropic detected one operation redirecting nearly half its traffic within 24 hours after releasing a new model, indicating a clear link between the attackers' actions and their competitors' product roadmaps. This highlights how these malicious actors exploit access to advanced chips and scale their operations to extract American intellectual property. The situation underscores the growing need for improved security measures in AI development and deployment. As AI becomes increasingly critical to national and global security, understanding these threats is essential for anyone interested in the future of AI and its ethical implications.

Verticals

Originally published on AI News on 2/24/2026