OpenAI reportedly claims it has evidence China’s DeepSeek ‘used its model’ to train AI chatbot – business live

WH Smith reports falling UK high street sales as it prepares for sale

Joanna Partridge

WH Smith has reported falling sales in its UK high street stores, just days after its parent company confirmed it is seeking a buyer for its legacy retail business.

Like-for-like sales in the retailer’s UK high street division – where it sells newspapers, books, stationery, cards and gifts – fell by 3% in the 21 weeks to 25 January, compared with a year earlier, although it said this was in line with expectations. It said it exited the Christmas trading period “with a clean stock position” and added it was on track to deliver full year cost savings of £11m.

It came as WH Smith reported 7% higher revenue in its more successful travel arm, and rising revenue in its North American division. The company’s share price rose by 5.7% in early trading on Wednesday morning, making it the second-biggest riser on the FTSE 250 index of mid-sized companies.

WH Smith’s eponymous parent company’s decision to put out a “for sale” sign for its 500 UK high street stores could see the name disappear from British town centres but potentially live on in train stations, airports and hospitals across 32 countries. The intended sale of the high street has created uncertainty for 5,000. The move would allow the company to focus on its more successful travel arm which accounted for three-quarters of the group’s revenue in the year to the end of August. The company said it was driving sales at its travel division stores by stocking more travel essentials including new food and health and beauty ranges.

Carl Cowling, WH Smith’s chief executive said:

The group is in a strong position, and while there is some economic uncertainty, we are confident of another year of good growth in 2025.

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OpenAI has claimed that it has evidence that Chinese competitor DeepSeek used the American company’s AI model to train its rival chatbot, according to Bloomberg News.

The release of DeepSeek’s open source R1 model has roiled global financial markets after the Chinese company appeared to have achieved comparable results to rivals who used far greater money and computing resources.

The claims prompted investors to question the underpinnings of the US stock market boom, which has been predicated on the idea that AI “hyperscalers” will need huge amounts of computing power to train AI models. The share price of chip company Nvidia recorded the biggest one-day decline in value in stock market history on Monday, before recovering some of its losses on Tuesday.

Global share prices steadied on Wednesday. Japan’s Topix index rose by 0.7%, while Australia’s ASX rose by 2.9%. The FTSE 100 was roughly flat at the opening bell.

AI companies and investors have been scrambling to understand the implications of DeepSeek’s rapid rise. OpenAI and its major backer, Microsoft, have been investigating whether DeepSeek obtained in an unauthorised manner, after observing some individuals exporting large amounts of data from OpenAI’s products, Bloomberg reported.

The Financial Times reported that OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, said it had seen some evidence of “distillation”, which it suspects to be from DeepSeek. That would violate OpenAI’s terms of service.

OpenAI has itself faced heavy criticism for its own approach to others’ intellectual property. The company is facing early hearings in a case led by the New York Times in which media companies claim the company used their data without permission.

Nevertheless, the claims could open up a new front in the technological struggles between the US and China.

Venture capitalist David Sacks was appointed by US president Donald Trump as AI and cryptocurrency “tsar”. He said on Tuesday night that there was evidence of “distillation”, when one AI model asks repeated questions of another to train itself on how to respond.

Sacks told Fox News:

There’s substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models, and I don’t think OpenAI is very happy about this.

I think one of the things you’re going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps to try to prevent distillation.

The agenda

• 2:15pm GMT: Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey at Treasury select committee

• 2:45pm GMT: Bank of Canada interest rate decision