
Huawei's AI lab denies that one of its Pangu models copied Alibaba's Qwen
The division, called Noah Ark Lab, issued the statement on Saturday, a day after an entity called HonestAGI posted an English-language paper on code-sharing platform Github, saying Huawei's Pangu Pro Moe (Mixture of Experts) model showed "extraordinary correlation" with Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B.
This suggests that Huawei's model was derived through "upcycling" and was not trained from scratch, the paper said, prompting widespread discussion in AI circles online and in Chinese tech-focused media.
The paper added that its findings indicated potential copyright violation, the fabrication of information in technical reports and false claims about Huawei's investment in training the model.
Noah Ark Lab said in its statement that the model was "not based on incremental training of other manufacturers' models" and that it had "made key innovations in architecture design and technical features." It is the first large-scale model built entirely on Huawei's Ascend chips, it added.
It also said that its development team had strictly adhered to open-source license requirements for any third-party code used, without elaborating which open-source models it took reference from.
Alibaba did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters was unable to contact HonestAGI or learn who is behind the entity.
The release of Chinese startup DeepSeek's open-source model R1 in January this year shocked Silicon Valley with its low cost and sparked intense competition between China's tech giants to offer competitive products.
Qwen 2.5-14B was released in May 2024 and is one of Alibaba's small-sized Qwen 2.5 model family which can be deployed on PC and smartphones.
While Huawei entered the large language model arena early with its original Pangu release in 2021, it has since been perceived as lagging behind rivals. It open-sourced its Pangu Pro Moe models on Chinese developer platform GitCode in late June, seeking to boost the adoption of its AI tech by providing free access to developers.
While Qwen is more consumer-facing and has chatbot services like ChatGPT, Huawei's Pangu models tend to be more used in government as well as the finance and manufacturing sectors.

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The Guardian
30 minutes ago
- The Guardian
World must be more wary than ever of China's growing economic power
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It sends us cheap electric cars and much else from its vast warehouse of electrical and electronic products. That shouldn't be an excuse for adopting a breezy, laissez-faire attitude. We might not have wanted to take sides. There is no issue with the people of Russia and China, but their governments have forced us to be more independent, and take the financial hit that comes with that.


Daily Mail
37 minutes ago
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Elon Musk's AI company tries to explain why chatbot Grok praised Hitler
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Times
2 hours ago
- Times
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That's a view shared by the US government, which has been vocal in its criticism. Europe faces a profound competitiveness crisis; gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the EU is half that in the US, and no European companies are in the world's top ten. As Mario Draghi, former prime minister of Italy and former president of the European Central Bank, has pointed out, the GDPR has hit profits by 12 per cent among small European tech companies. Meanwhile, the costs of the DMA are mounting, and big concerns have been raised about the AI Act, too. Many member states are exasperated by the European Commission's approach and many political and business leaders are urging it to change course. Those calls have so far mostly fallen on deaf ears. Meta is all in on artificial intelligence. Our hope and expectation is that AI will benefit everyone, everywhere, which is one of the reasons why we believe strongly in open-source innovation — where technologies are available free of charge for researchers and developers to use, modify and build on. Having done pioneering work for more than a decade, we are developing ever more advanced AI models and products, and Mark Zuckerberg recently brought our AI teams together as Meta Superintelligence Labs to focus our work on his vision for personalised superintelligence for everyone. • Elon Musk's war on regulators might explain his sudden interest in the UK As a global company, we think long and hard about where to invest our resources. The UK is Meta's largest hub outside the US with about 5,000 staff, more than half working in technology and engineering teams. With tens of millions of users of our apps — which include Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — it also represents a valuable market of engaged users. This benefits both us and the country. Our analysis of UK ad campaigns found that every pound spent on our AI-powered, personalised ads drives an average £3.82 in revenue for businesses. This means ad spending on our platform directly supports more than £15.5 billion in business revenues every year. The government's approach gives us confidence to keep investing here. Last week, we announced a $16 million (£12 million) audio lab in Cambridge dedicated to advancing and developing the world-class audio tech that goes into our AI-enabled wearables. We have also invested $1 million in a first-of-its-kind AI fellowship programme developed with the government and the Alan Turing Institute, under which the institute will place the brightest minds into government roles to work on high-profile AI projects. To use an American expression, we have skin in the game; we are committed to the UK and want it to succeed in AI, for both our sakes. But the government needs to follow through on its rhetoric with action. The chancellor has called on regulators to focus on boosting growth, but whether all the regulatory authorities heard the call remains to be seen. A European-style regulatory regime that approaches these technologies with defensiveness — or worse, protectionism — will hamper innovation and make technology companies think twice about investing here. And there are debates taking place, over issues such as end-to-end encryption, personalised advertising and the data used to train AI models, that could undermine the government's thoughtful approach. Europe's intransigence increases the opportunity for the UK to lead. If the government truly wants to seize the opportunity and become the third superpower in the global AI race, it needs to resist the trap that its cousins across the Channel have fallen into and instead follow through with its commitment to make the UK a place where innovation thrives. Joel Kaplan is chief global affairs officer at Meta