US Government Website Briefly Ran Alibaba's Qwen — Days After the FBI Called Such Models Malicious
Ars Technica AI · rss · 2026-09-19
US officials on Wednesday removed a Chinese AI search tool briefly deployed on the Federal Register website, Reuters reported. The removal came after social media users spotted an apparent contradiction: the National Archives was offering visitors a Qwen model from Alibaba to search public comments on proposed regulations — even though the FBI had earlier this month named Alibaba among six leading Chinese firms allegedly conducting "industrial-scale distillation" of US frontier models, which the agency says helps America's biggest rival cut costs and development time in the AI race.
It's unclear when the Qwen-powered search went live. The National Archives has not commented on the removal or responded to Ars' request for comment; the White House and FBI also declined to comment.
More from Companies & People
- Meta's chief AI officer Alexandr Wang hails Muse: 'madness taking over the nation' — alexandr_wang · 2026-09-20
- A Six-Dimension, Six-Level Framework for Scoring Your Organization's GenAI Maturity — kashifmanzoor · 2026-09-20
- Cambridge offers up to £10,000 per project for AI in teaching experiments — lawrennd · 2026-09-20
- Nucleus launches Vitruvian genetic optimization models claiming 14 IQ point embryo gains — ___Patrice___ · 2026-09-19
- Insiders: OpenAI and Anthropic oversold AI security breaches to pressure feds — Neurogence · 2026-09-19
- NVIDIA Opens 2027 Applied Research Internships on Humanoid Robots (Isaac Loco-Manipulation) — YuXiang_IRVL · 2026-09-19