https://www.perplexity.ai/page/openai-claims-deepseek-used-it-3WNYRWivRdm90JDznlWCPA
OpenAI alleges that it has uncovered evidence suggesting DeepSeek utilized its proprietary models without authorization to train a competing open-source system. The controversy centers around a technique called “distillation,” where outputs from larger AI models are used to train smaller ones12. Security researchers identified individuals linked to DeepSeek extracting substantial data through OpenAI’s API in late 2024, leading to the blocking of suspected accounts for terms of service violations.