Mar 26 (East Tech Now) - Rakuten AI 3.0 was introduced as Japan’s most powerful self-developed large language model — a supposed breakthrough for the country’s domestic AI industry. But within hours of its launch, serious controversy erupted.
Open-source researchers began analyzing the model files and discovered technical clues allegedly linking Rakuten AI 3.0 to DeepSeek, a well-known open-source large model from China. The accusations quickly spread across the global tech community, raising major questions about originality, open-source compliance, government subsidies, and corporate transparency.
In this video, we break down:
What Rakuten claimed at launch
Why the model was accused of being a “wrapper” around DeepSeek
The Hugging Face evidence that triggered the backlash
Why this became a credibility crisis in Japan
The bigger implications for open-source AI and global competition
This is not just a story about one company. It reflects a much deeper issue in the AI race: where do we draw the line between open-source adaptation and misleading claims of “independent development”?
Source: East Tech Now
