Fair suspicion:

  ‘Savitt asked Musk if his artificial intelligence company, xAI, had ever “distilled” technology from OpenAI. Distillation is way of using one A.I. technology to create another, and it is not allowed by OpenAI’s terms of service.

  “Generally A.I. companies distill other A.I. companies,” Musk answered.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” Savitt asked. Musk answered, “Partly.”

  Distillation has become an increasingly important issue as companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have complained that Chinese companies are distilling their systems.’

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/30/technology/openai-tr...