Huawei’s Noah Ark Lab has denied claims that its Pangu Pro large language model copied elements from Alibaba’s Qwen 2.5 14B model.

The allegations came from a paper posted by HonestAGI on GitHub, which pointed to similarities and accused Huawei of misreporting its training efforts and violating copyright.

Huawei responded that its model was independently developed, featuring architectural innovations and built entirely on its Ascend chips.

It also said it followed open-source license rules but did not name which models were referenced.

Qwen 2.5-14B, launched in May 2024, is optimized for PCs and smartphones. Huawei’s Pangu models, launched in 2021, are mainly used in government, finance, and manufacturing.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ China’s competitive AI landscape is driving unprecedented price wars and innovation

The accusation against Huawei highlights the intensifying competition in China’s AI sector, where tech giants are racing to develop competitive models while slashing prices to gain market share.

DeepSeek’s release of its open-source model R1 in January sparked intense competition between China’s tech giants to develop comparable offerings, pushing companies to rapidly iterate their models.

Alibaba Cloud has aggressively cut prices on its AI models by up to 85% in late 2024, including on the Qwen-VL visual language model, demonstrating how competitive pressure is making advanced AI more accessible 1.

This competitive environment explains why allegations of model copying generate such attention, as companies invest heavily in AI development, protecting intellectual property becomes increasingly critical to maintaining competitive advantage.

The market dynamics also reveal distinct positioning strategies, with Alibaba’s Qwen being “more consumer-facing” with ChatGPT-like services, while Huawei’s Pangu models focus on “government, finance and manufacturing sectors,” showing how companies are carving out specialized niches.

2️⃣ AI intellectual property protection is evolving rapidly in China’s legal system

The controversy between Huawei and Alibaba coincides with landmark developments in Chinese copyright law addressing AI-generated content, creating new precedents for how model ownership will be protected.

In May 2024, a Chinese court issued a groundbreaking ruling that recognized copyright protection for AI-generated images, establishing that human creators using AI tools could claim intellectual property rights when their prompts reflected sufficient “intellectual achievement” 2.

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