Huawei Denies Accusations of Copying Alibaba's AI Model, Sparking Debate in China's Tech Sector

Accusations of AI Model Plagiarism

Huawei Technologies Co.'s artificial intelligence research division, Noah Ark Lab, has found itself at the center of a controversy in China's competitive AI market. The lab is facing accusations that its Pangu Pro large language model has copied elements from rival Alibaba Group's Qwen model 1

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The allegations stem from a paper published on GitHub by an entity called HonestAGI, which claimed to have found an "extraordinary correlation" between Huawei's Pangu Pro Moe (Mixture of Experts) model and Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B 2

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. The paper suggested that Huawei's model was derived through "upcycling" rather than being trained from scratch, raising concerns about potential copyright violations and misrepresentation of training investments 3

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Huawei's Response and Claims

In response to these accusations, Noah Ark Lab issued a statement vehemently denying the claims. The lab asserted that the Pangu Pro model was "not based on incremental training of other manufacturers' models" and that it had "made key innovations in architecture design and technical features" 4

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Huawei emphasized that Pangu Pro MoE is the world's first model of its kind to be trained entirely on Ascend chips – Huawei's answer to Nvidia Corp.'s AI accelerators. While acknowledging the use of open-source code, which they described as "common practice," Huawei maintained that they respected intellectual property rights and adhered strictly to licensing terms 1

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Implications for China's AI Sector

This controversy has sparked widespread discussion in AI circles online and in Chinese tech-focused media. It signals a potential turning point in China's AI race, which was once characterized by state-aligned innovation but now faces open rivalry among top players 3

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The dispute comes at a time of intense competition in China's AI market. Earlier in 2024, Chinese startup DeepSeek's release of its open-source model R1 shocked Silicon Valley with its low cost, igniting a fierce competition among China's tech giants to offer competitive products 2

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Market Positions and Future Implications

While Huawei entered the large language model arena early with its original Pangu release in 2021, it has since been perceived as lagging behind rivals. The company recently open-sourced its Pangu Pro Moe models on the Chinese developer platform GitCode, aiming to boost the adoption of its AI technology 5

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Alibaba, on the other hand, has been expanding its AI and cloud presence globally. The company has committed $52 billion over three years to cloud and AI infrastructure and is partnering with tech giants like Microsoft and Nvidia 5

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As the controversy unfolds, industry analysts suggest that this dispute could undermine China's ability to compete with US giants like OpenAI and Google DeepMind in the global AI race 3

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. The outcome of this situation may have significant implications for the future of AI development and competition in China and beyond.