US officials pulled a Chinese AI search tool from the Federal Register website on Wednesday, Reuters reported, after social media users spotted the Qwen model on a government site despite the FBI's recent warnings about Chinese AI firms.

Earlier this month, the FBI named Alibaba among six Chinese companies it accuses of "industrial-scale distillation," which the agency says helps America's biggest AI competitor cut costs and development time.

It's unclear when the National Archives, which runs the site, began offering the Qwen search option for public comments on proposed regulations. A widely shared screenshot showed the option on September 15, and an archived version of the site's code confirmed the model was removed Wednesday, meaning it was live for at least a day. The Archives, White House and FBI have not commented.

Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called the disconnect "insane." Georgetown law professor Anupam Chander said any security risk depends on how the model was trained, while Senator Mark Warner said it matters whether US data was processed by Alibaba-controlled systems.

Source: Ars Technica