Did the upstart Chinese tech company DeepSeek copy ChatGPT to make the artificial intelligence technology that shook Wall Street this week? That's what ChatGPT maker OpenAI is suggesting, along with U.

OpenAI is investigating whether Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek trained its new chatbot by repeatedly querying the U.S. company’s AI models. A spokesperson said the ChatGPT maker is reviewing indications that DeepSeek extricated large volumes of data from OpenAI’s tools to help develop its technology,

OpenAI—which faces multiple lawsuits for using content without permission—accuses DeepSeek of 'distillation,' a technique that use larger models' outputs to improve smaller ones.

DeepSeek, a Hangzhou-based startup founded in 2023, shot to the top of Apple’s App Store free app chart after releasing a new open-source AI model it says rivals OpenAI's work. Its website was hit by outages amid a spike in interest.

With a model that offers comparable performance at seemingly a fraction of the cost, the DeepSeek chatbot is causing a reckoning over American dominance in the tech industry. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on advanced chip sales to slow down progress in AI elsewhere.