Source: The Information
Elon Musk's xAI allegedly circumvented Anthropic's API access controls by routing Claude through personal accounts and a third-party service (Blackbox AI). The incident exposes a vulnerability in how AI companies gate their models: once accessible via any API or interface, competitors can exploit it at scale for distillation. Licensing deals depend on artificial scarcity that technical restrictions alone cannot enforce. Without hard technical barriers, partnerships between AI labs rest on trust between companies with misaligned incentives—a dynamic that mirrors how video game studios lost control of proprietary engines once they leaked.