Jensen Huang calls AI distillation 'competition' as Bessent brands it 'theft'

Jensen Huang says AI distillation is 'competition.'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back on the White House's characterization of AI model distillation, telling CNBC it's simply 'competition.' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the practice 'theft' in July and threatened sanctions against overseas firms that use it to extract capabilities from U.S. models. The dispute has become a flashpoint in U.S.-China AI tensions, with CISA accusing Chinese companies of 'industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns' and Anthropic alleging Alibaba and DeepSeek engaged in 'illicit distillation.'