China Weighs Blocking Foreign Access to Top AI Models

China is reportedly considering a ban on overseas access to its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models.

That’s according to a report Tuesday (July 7) by Reuters, citing sources familiar with the plans who say the ban could include unreleased artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Sources say Chinese authorities have met with some of the country’s biggest tech companies, including eCommerce giant Alibaba and ByteDance, originator of TikTok.

Those discussions, Reuters noted, follow several steps by the government to keep domestic AI inside China. It also highlights the way both China and the U.S. have begun viewing frontier model AI as a crucial national asset, the report added.

During the meetings, headed by China’s Ministry of Commerce, participants considered limits on both the open-source and closed-source versions of the most advanced AI models, two of the sources told Reuters.

Officials also discussed making the leak or theft of proprietary AI technology an offense under China’s national security law, one of the sources said, adding that officials also floated the idea of new restrictions on who ‌can fund Chinese AI startups.

In related news, Alibaba has blocked its workers from using Anthropic’s AI tools on the job, according to a CNBC report Monday (July 6). Sources familiar with the matter told the network Alibaba has placed Anthropic’s Claude Code on a high-risk software list.

This came after allegations by Anthropic last month that Alibaba had “brazenly” and “illicitly” tried to extract the U.S. startup’s AI capabilities and had carried out “the largest known distillation attack” on it to date.

Sources told CNBC that Alibaba staff was instructed to uninstall Anthropic models and agent products and instead use the in-house Qoder AI assistant.

Also Monday, Bloomberg News reported that China was preparing a crackdown on AI chatbots that can simulate human emotions. New regulations dealing with those bots go into effect July 15, leading companies like ByteDance and Alibaba to halt features that allow users to create and chat with AI companions, the report said.

The new regulations are born out of concern about AI chatbots mimicking human personalities and emotions and the attachment people can form with those bots.

As Bloomberg noted, American tech platforms have faced legal scrutiny because of these bots. OpenAI and Character.ai have both been sued over claims that their chatbots caused harmful emotional dependencies and in some cases even led vulnerable users to end their lives.