Huawei Technologies Co.’s secretive AI research lab has pushed back against accusations it relied on rivals’ models to develop its own Pangu platform, taking the unusual step of rebutting claims about its artificial intelligence efforts.

Huawei's artificial intelligence research division has rejected claims that a version of its Pangu Pro large language model has copied elements from an Alibaba model, saying that it was independently developed and trained.

Huawei released the source code for its PanGu 7B dense parameter model and the larger PanGuPro mixture-of-experts (MoE) 72B model, both tailored for inference on its in-house Ascend AI chips. Initially lauded as a landmark in China's drive for AI independence,