Chinese technology giant Alibaba has reportedly directed its employees to stop using Claude Code, an artificial intelligence programming tool developed by Anthropic.

According to reports, the restriction will take effect on July 10 as the company strengthens its internal cybersecurity policies and places greater emphasis on protecting sensitive corporate information.

Employees have instead been instructed to adopt Alibaba’s in house coding assistant, Qoder, for software development and other programming related tasks.

The decision comes amid growing tensions surrounding access to advanced artificial intelligence technologies.

Anthropic already restricts companies based in China, as well as certain foreign businesses owned by Chinese firms, from using its AI models.

The company has also been working to close loopholes that previously allowed some users in restricted regions to gain access to its services through indirect means.

These measures reflect broader efforts by AI developers to comply with international regulations and protect proprietary technology.

Recent online discussions suggested that one version of Claude Code had been designed to identify users operating from China, sparking debate among developers and cybersecurity experts.

Anthropic later confirmed that the feature had been introduced as part of an experiment aimed at preventing unauthorized account usage by third party resellers.

Also, limiting attempts to use its models for AI distillation, a process in which one artificial intelligence system is trained using the outputs of another.

Company officials stated that stronger safeguards have since been implemented and that the experimental feature was already being phased out.

Alibaba has reportedly classified Claude Code as high risk software, citing concerns about data security and operational compliance.

By encouraging employees to rely on Qoder instead, the company hopes to maintain greater control over its software development environment while reducing potential security risks associated with external AI tools.

The move underscores the growing competition among global technology companies as they race to develop their own artificial intelligence platforms while navigating increasingly complex regulatory and security challenges.

Source: TechCrunch