The U.S. Congress has launched a full-scale investigation, saying it could become a national security issue if domestic corporations such as Airbnb use Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models.
On the 30th (local time), according to Bloomberg and other foreign media, the House Homeland Security Committee and the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to Airbnb and AnySphere requesting information such as the status of their use of Chinese AI models and the scale of data processing. Bloomberg interpreted this as "a move to keep China in check in the global AI race and to block the possibility of American user data leaking."
Through the letter, the Homeland Security Committee expressed strong concern, defining China's rapid boosting of its AI capabilities by leveraging U.S. technology as at the level of "espionage." The scope of the investigation includes not only whether the companies use Chinese models internally but also all communications with the Chinese side and the extent of customer data handling.
Airbnb is using Alibaba's Qwen as its main model instead of ChatGPT from U.S. AI Big Tech OpenAI. Airbnb Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky said in an interview last year that ChatGPT's app-integration features were not yet mature enough to be applied to the company's platform. Because it is an authentication-based community service, high stability and independence are required to integrate with external platforms. By contrast, Qwen is fast and inexpensive, and it is easy to apply in real service environments, making it highly efficient in practical use areas such as customer support, the company assessed.
AnySphere applied a model from Beijing-based AI corporation Moonshot AI, in which Alibaba has invested, to its own coding tool. The U.S. Congress took issue with the fact that AnySphere co-founder Aman Sangha used Moonshot AI's "Kimi" model to develop a new version of the AI agent "Cursor," called "Composer 2." AnySphere is an AI startup headquartered in San Francisco. In particular, it has drawn industry attention to the degree that SpaceX is being mentioned as a potential acquirer for about $60 billion (about 89 trillion won).
Bloomberg explained that the investigation shows the competition for supremacy in AI technology is expanding from rivalry among corporations to a national security issue. Congress said that if domestic AI firms use Chinese technology, core systems in the United States could end up relying on models within the Chinese government's sphere of influence.
Chairperson John Moolenaar of the China committee and Chairperson Andrew Garbarino of the Homeland Security Committee said they have "serious concerns about the national security and data security implications of this approach for U.S. user data and system integrity."
The committees demanded that the two corporations submit materials by May 13 and also requested in-person briefings on May 20. Bloomberg reported that Airbnb did not offer a position and AnySphere declined to comment.