Here’s the exchange, as best as WIRED can capture:
OpenAI attorney William Savitt: Do you know what distillation is?
Musk: It means using one AI model to train another AI model.
Savit: Has xAI done that with OpenAI?
Musk: In general, all artificial intelligence companies [do that].
Savit: So this is yes.
Musk: partially.
Distillation is a technique in which a smaller AI model is trained to mimic the behavior of a larger, more capable model, making it cheaper and faster to run while maintaining much of its performance.
OpenAI’s lawyer, William Savitt, then asked whether OpenAI’s technology had been used in any way to develop xAI.
Savit: Was OpenAI technology used in any way to develop xAI?
Musk: It is standard practice to use other AI systems to validate your AI.
OpenAI and xAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
OpenAI is trying to prevent its competitors from mining its AI models, particularly Chinese AI lab DeepSeek. In a February 2026 memo to a House committee, OpenAI wrote that it “has taken steps to protect and harden our models against distillation.” In that memo, OpenAI said it is focused on ensuring there is a playing field “on which China cannot advance authoritarian AI by appropriating and repackaging American innovation.”
The Trump administration has also taken steps to prevent Chinese companies from extracting American AI models. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a memo dated April 2026 that he would share information with American artificial intelligence companies about foreign distillation. “The US government is committed to the free and fair development of AI technologies across a competitive ecosystem,” Kratsios said in a post on X.
US AI labs have used each other’s AI models in other ways, to test progress and evaluate safety. But in today’s competitive landscape, some AI companies have completely isolated competing labs. In August 2025, Anthropic blocked OpenAI’s access to Claude’s coding models after the company claimed its terms of service had been violated. Recently, Anthropic banned XAI from using its AI models in programming as well.
In his multi-day debriefing with Musk, Savit questioned Musk about his attempts to take control of OpenAI, and thus his quest to take on the maker of ChatGPT. On Wednesday, Savitt provided emails and texts from 2017 to support a set of questions about whether Musk pressured OpenAI by withholding funding and hiring key researchers.
