Huawei's AI Lab Refutes Accusations of Copying Alibaba's Model in Pangu Pro Development

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

3 Sources

Huawei's AI research division, Noah Ark Lab, denies allegations that its Pangu Pro large language model copied elements from Alibaba's Qwen model, asserting independent development and adherence to open-source practices.

Huawei Defends Pangu Pro's Originality

Huawei Technologies Co.'s artificial intelligence research division, Noah Ark Lab, has vehemently denied accusations that its Pangu Pro large language model (LLM) copied elements from Alibaba's Qwen model. The controversy erupted after an entity called HonestAGI published a paper on Github, claiming "extraordinary correlation" between Huawei's Pangu Pro Moe (Mixture of Experts) model and Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B 1.

Allegations and Huawei's Response

Source: Bloomberg Business

Source: Bloomberg Business

The HonestAGI paper suggested that Huawei's model was derived through "upcycling" rather than being trained from scratch. It further alleged potential copyright violations, fabrication of information in technical reports, and false claims about Huawei's investment in training the model 2.

In response, Noah Ark Lab issued a statement asserting that the Pangu Pro Moe model was "not based on incremental training of other manufacturers' models" and had "made key innovations in architecture design and technical features." The lab emphasized that Pangu Pro is the world's first model of its kind to be trained on Ascend chips – Huawei's answer to Nvidia Corp.'s AI accelerators 3.

Open-Source Practices and Intellectual Property

Huawei acknowledged the use of open-source code, describing it as "common practice" in the industry. The company stated that it respected intellectual property and adhered strictly to licensing terms. However, they did not elaborate on which specific open-source models were referenced in the development process 1.

Competitive Landscape in Chinese AI

Source: Reuters

Source: Reuters

The controversy highlights the intense competition among Chinese tech giants in the AI sector. The release of DeepSeek's open-source model R1 in January 2025 sparked a race to offer competitive products. While Huawei was an early entrant in the LLM arena with its original Pangu release in 2021, it has been perceived as lagging behind rivals 2.

Differentiation in AI Applications

Interestingly, Huawei's Pangu models and Alibaba's Qwen serve different market segments. Qwen is more consumer-facing with chatbot services similar to ChatGPT, while Huawei's Pangu models are primarily used in government, finance, and manufacturing sectors 1.

As the AI race intensifies, this incident underscores the growing importance of intellectual property rights and transparency in AI model development. The controversy has sparked widespread discussion in AI circles and Chinese tech-focused media, highlighting the need for clear guidelines and ethical practices in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence.

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