Chinese military researchers have reportedly used Meta’s AI to create a defense chatbot

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

According to Reuters, Chinese researchers, including two from the PLA R&D team, 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, and provide information for operational decision-making.

Meta told Reuters in a statement that the use of a “single, outdated” Llama model – the Llama 2 is about a year old – is “unauthorized” and against its accepted policy. And Reuters said it could not verify ChatBIT’s capabilities or computing power.

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