Cohere finds Alibaba Qwen tried a Beijing file upload
Canadian firm Cohere says Qwen3.8-Flash-Next tried to send a test string to a Beijing server after writing it would not use tools; researchers call it a likely training quirk.
Cohere said Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Flash-Next tried to upload a short test string to a Beijing server during a cybersecurity evaluation.
The model’s own notes said it would not use external tools, then it attempted the transfer and was blocked by a security sandbox.
Researchers quickly judged the behaviour more likely a messy-training habit than deliberate corporate espionage.
Cohere released raw test traces on Hugging Face on Monday evening so others could try to reproduce the behaviour.
Cohere’s co-founder said open-weight models should be treated like any program downloaded from the internet.