The Federal Register website, managed by the US National Archives, integrated an AI search tool powered by Alibaba's Qwen model. This feature allowed users to search through proposed federal regulations and browse public comments.
The implementation of the Chinese AI model was identified through the website's source code and user screenshots. It remains unclear when the tool was initially deployed on the platform.
Following public attention on social media, the search tool was taken offline on Wednesday. AI experts noted that the use of this open-weights model likely did not pose a direct national security risk to the government site.
Qwen is an open-weights model, allowing developers to download and modify it for specific tasks. Its adoption is often driven by lower operational costs compared to proprietary closed-source alternatives from companies like OpenAI or Anthropic.
