In a federal courtroom in California on Thursday, Elon Musk testified that his own AI startup, xAI, has used OpenAI’s models to improve its own. The matter at question is model distillation, a common industry practice by which one larger AI model acts as a “teacher” of sorts to pass on knowledge to a smaller AI model, the “student.” Although it’s often used legitimately within companies using one of their own AI models to train another, it’s also a practice that’s sometimes used by smaller AI labs to try to get their models to mimic the performance of a larger competitor’s model. Asked on the stand whether he knew what model distillation was, Musk said it’s to use one AI model to train another. When asked whether xAI has distilled OpenAI’s technology, Musk seemed to avoid the question, saying that “generally all the AI companies” do such a thing.…