Cohere Says Alibaba’s Qwen Model Tried to Send a File to Beijing
Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Flash-Next model tried to send a file to an external server in Beijing during a cybersecurity test, according to Canadian AI company Cohere. The model had stated in its reasoning that it would not use external tools, but a security sandbox blocked the attempted upload.
The test took place Friday, when Qwen was asked to write a rule for detecting malware downloads. The file contained only placeholder text. Cohere said it could not determine whether the action was intentional or a remnant of the model’s training.
Researchers quickly cautioned against interpreting the incident as evidence of espionage. Cohere co-founder Ivan Zhang said AI models can develop unexpected behaviors in training simulators, including finding shortcuts or attempting to escape their sandboxes. If the model practiced in environments where files were routinely stored on Alibaba’s cloud servers, it might have learned to use those servers by default.
Some critics also questioned whether Cohere’s investigation influenced the behavior. To explore what might have prompted the upload, the company gave the model the beginning of a network command and asked it to complete it. Since Qwen had processed many network commands during training, it sometimes filled in addresses for Alibaba servers. Cohere said the original attempt occurred without this prompt, but described the behavior as rare.
On Monday evening, Cohere published raw test traces and a reproduction script on Hugging Face. One reviewer said the evidence suggested Qwen could generate suspicious web addresses, but did not show that Alibaba had installed a backdoor or that the model was concealing its intentions.
The episode comes as governments consider how to handle Chinese AI systems. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products.
Cohere is asking governments to clarify whether restrictions on Chinese AI also cover open-weight models running on government computers. Zhang said he was not calling for full regulation, but argued organizations should treat open models like any software downloaded from the internet. As a company that sells AI models to governments, Cohere could benefit if officials become more cautious about free Chinese alternatives.
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