Guo Renjie, the founder and CEO of the Chinese startup JoyIn, has accused OpenAI of copying both the model and the website of his humanoid robot, Aether. In an open letter, Guo highlighted technical and visual similarities between JoyIn's Aether and OpenAI's new model, GPT-6 Astra. He noted that OpenAI's language describing Astra closely resembles the terminology JoyIn had previously used for Aether. Additionally, Guo pointed out that JoyIn had introduced the concept of an "extraterrestrial visitor" during a speech in Silicon Valley, a month before OpenAI's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, published an article titled "An Extraterrestrial Mind" on September 6. According to Guo, this similarity is not coincidental and suggests that OpenAI may have drawn directly from JoyIn's work, even in the design of the website for GPT-6 Astra. In artificial intelligence, the term "distillation" refers to the process of training a model using responses from a more advanced model, allowing the new model to replicate capabilities without the cost of initial research. Guo's detailed analysis of these similarities has raised questions about the originality of OpenAI's work. However, OpenAI has not yet responded to requests for comment, according to CNBC. The Aether model, developed by JoyIn's team led by Zhu Mingxuan, who previously worked at the American company Figure, has a 90% success rate on physical tasks on the first attempt. This is due to its use of a perceptual rather than textual approach to robot control. Guo claims that JoyIn presented the conceptual framework for Aether in mid-August, which included recursive self-improvement and the optimization of computing power. Just three weeks later, Pachocki reused these concepts in nearly identical terms. Recursive self-improvement and computing power optimization are common research topics in the AI sector, though each company applies them differently. In a separate development, Anthropic accused Alibaba of stealing data from its Claude model using 28 million exchanges. In response, the NSA, FBI, and CISA issued a joint alert, naming six Chinese companies for allegedly using VPNs and account diversions to extract data from models like Claude, GPT, and Gemini. Anthropic later stated it had cut access to its models for several Chinese companies involved in such activities. Despite these concerns, Chinese humanoid robotics companies continue to attract investment. JoyIn, founded in December 2024, has already commercialized its first product, the companion robot M1, which has over 30,000 orders. The company also launched a new brand, Zeroth, for future humanoid robots. In July 2026, Ant Group led a fundraising round of 500 million yuan (about 63 million euros), alongside other investors. Since its inception, JoyIn has raised approximately 127 million euros, making it the twelfth investment by Ant Group in Chinese humanoid robots in eighteen months.