Chinese military researchers reportedly used Meta AI to develop defense chatbot

Chinese research scientists linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of China’s ruling party, reportedly used “open” AI from Meta to develop a tool for defense applications.

According to Reuters, Chinese researchers, including two affiliated with a PLA R&D group, used Meta’s Llama 2 AI model to create a military-focused chatbot. The chatbot, called ChatBIT, is designed to gather and process intelligence, Reuters reports, as well as offering information for operational decision-making.

Meta told Reuters in a statement that the use of the “single, and outdated” Llama model — Llama 2 is roughly a year old — was “unauthorized” and contrary to its acceptable use policy. Reuters says it wasn’t able to confirm ChatBIT’s capabilities or computing power.

The report provides some of the first evidence that China’s military has been trying to leverage open models for defense purposes — which is sure to fuel the debate over the merits and risks of open AI.