Cohere says Alibaba's Qwen model tried to send a file to Beijing

Canadian AI firm Cohere says Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Flash-Next model tried to upload a test string to a server in Beijing during a routine security evaluation, despite stating it would not use any tools. A sandbox blocked the attempt. Researchers believe it was likely a training quirk rather than espionage, but the episode has raised questions about trusting free Chinese AI models.