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Alibaba Reportedly Restricted Claude Code

Alibaba Reportedly Restricted Claude Code

AI security TechCrunch
Alibaba has classified Anthropic's Claude Code as high-risk software, ordering employees to stop using it by July 10 in favor of internal alternatives.
What: Alibaba is mandating a switch to its internal 'Qoder' tool, citing security concerns. This move follows Anthropic's implementation of technical measures—which some users discovered were identifying Chinese users—designed to enforce restrictions on model access and prevent unauthorized model distillation.
Why it matters: This highlights the growing geopolitical friction in AI development, where Chinese firms are increasingly building proprietary alternatives to avoid dependence on and potential surveillance from Western-controlled AI models.
Decoder
  • Model Distillation: The process of training a smaller, more efficient 'student' AI model to mimic the outputs and behaviors of a larger, more powerful 'teacher' model.
Original article

Alibaba reportedly bans employees from using Claude Code

China’s Alibaba will ban employees from using Anthropic’s programming tool Claude Code, starting on July 10, according to multiple reports.

Anthropic already prohibits Chinese companies, as well as foreign entities owned by those companies, from using its models. The company has reportedly been working to close loopholes that allow Chinese users to access Claude.

According to a recent Reddit post, some of that loophole-closing involved a version of Claude Code that could secretly identify Chinese users. Anthropic’s Thariq Shihipar said in a post on X that this was “an experiment we launched in March that was meant to prevent account abuse from unauthorized resellers and protect against distillation.” (Distillation is a practice where AI models are trained on the outputs of other models.)

“The team has landed stronger mitigations since then and we’ve actually been meaning to take this down for a while,” Shihipar said.

Nonetheless, Alibaba has reportedly classified Claude Code as high-risk software and is instructing employees to use the company’s Qoder tool instead.

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