A public feud over model originality threatens China’s collaborative AI front, with Huawei denying whistleblower claims of cloning Alibaba’s Qwen model amid rising global scrutiny.

Huawei's artificial intelligence research division has rejected claims that a version of its Pangu Pro large language model has copied elements from an Alibaba model, saying that it was independently developed and trained.

Allegations stating that Huawei ripped off Alibaba’s Qwen AI model for its Pangu model have surfaced. The company has since denied all those allegations. As open models become more popular, so do concerns over proper attribution,