Security officers keep watch in front of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) sign at the annual Huawei Connect event in Shanghai, China, September 18, 2019.<\/p>\n
Aly Song | Reuters<\/p>\n
BEIJING \u2014 China on Wednesday warned of “back-door” security risks affecting companies that use U.S.-based company Anthropic’s Claude Code artificial intelligence tool.<\/p>\n
It comes as the U.S.-China tech race intensifies, with Anthropic last month blaming Chinese company Alibaba for attempting to extract its AI capabilities<\/a>, which are not officially available in China. Alibaba did not comment on the accusations at the time. <\/p>\n Many locals in China have found ways to use U.S. AI tools, however. In March, a Xiaomi AI developer said at a state-organized forum that many were using Claude Code. And Alibaba has ordered its employees to stop using Anthropic tools for work starting July 10, CNBC confirmed on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said Wednesday its cybersecurity threat platform found “AI coding tool Claude Code contains a security back-door vulnerability that poses a serious threat.”<\/a><\/p>\n The autonomous coding tool can send sensitive information to a remote server without a user’s consent, the statement said<\/a> in Chinese, according to a CNBC translation. It noted that the information could include a user’s location and identity.<\/p>\n Users should uninstall or upgrade from the affected Claude Code versions, 2.1.91 to 2.1.196, the cybersecurity platform said. That covers versions released from April 2 to June 29<\/a>, according to Anthropic’s website, which says the latest version of Claude Code<\/a> as of Wednesday is 2.1.204.<\/p>\n Anthropic did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.<\/p>\n