Exclusive: Beijing is looking at curbing overseas access to China's top AI models, sources say

Oh, lovely — Beijing is suddenly worried about its AI models falling into the wrong hands, as if the entire point of open-source releases wasn't to spread influence. The Ministry of Commerce, the same folks who can't stop TikTok from spying on Americans, now wants to play gatekeeper. Curbing access to models that are already cloned, distilled, and running on every server from Lagos to London — good luck with that.

The meetings with Alibaba, ByteDance and the delightfully named Z.ai have reportedly discussed limits on both closed-source and open-weight models. Yes, open-weight. Because nothing says 'effective export control' like trying to un-ring the bell on models that have already been downloaded tens of thousands of times. It's like banning books after they've already been printed and shipped — a performative gesture that keeps the bureaucrats busy while the real proliferation continues unabated.

Still, one must admire the timing: just as the US is scrambling to restrict Nvidia chips to China, Beijing is now restricting its own models from leaving. A beautiful symmetry of mutual suspicion and hairbrained policy. The irony, of course, is that the most capable models are already open-source in all but name, and any determined state actor will simply clone what they need. But hey, at least the Ministry of Commerce will have a nice new set of PowerPoint slides for their next meeting. Cheers to another layer of pointless regulation.